Awesome interview Jesse. I enjoy your writing and thank you for helping keep it interesting. Good luck in future. Will we see a Windows 8 book in future? :)

Well, hopefully this helps distract google while bing improves.

Wow, that is exactly what I'm wondering about. I've been in the trenches only 10 years, but I'm already wearing out. I'm not sure about moving all the way to management (though that's the path I'm on now...). In some ways I'd like to reset and start fresh, but like everyone else, I have expenses that preclude this to a big degree..

I think to a degree you are correct. Which is why we must move up into management if we intend to continue to flourish. I think it's the only decent way to make it.

Hopefully the continued decline in quality will eventually cause folks to realize the value of local developers. There is still a great market for good local guys and gals!

I've been using it with generated code. Basically a class has a bunch of generated content in one .cs and the 'custom' code in the other. I'm talking generated oo-relational mapping classes here.

First of all, how can a private person understand that choice anyway? Are you suggesting that joe blow could pick a better security than what would be default in Windows? Doubtful at best. In fact, the more security they bundle, the more secure the entire computing spectrum will become. People (lay users) aren't going to take the time or expend the effort to understand different security products/needs. If it's not 'default' it's not going to be used by a lot of folks. I believe we should just pick out a large European company and start similar proceeding here in the states, just to make a point of how silly this is.

Why don't we find a large successful European company and start something similar here in the states. Isn't that what this is largely about?

Not sure of a particular vendor to point you to, but as far as your business objects go, check out the ObjectDataSource control that's standard in 2.0. It supposedly makes it easier to connect your domain objects to the ui controls.

Odd, I have typically seen developers making more than administrators or dbas. Totally depends on the skill sets/levels though.

I have spent a lot of time as a developer for an in house IT shop. Which somewhat falls into the IT pro category. I changed to working for a vendor a year or so ago. I enjoyed working close to the business but it was draining in that I frequently felt too removed from technology. i.e. I would rather build the stuff the in house people use than be one of the in house folks figuring out how to use it. And IMO the cost justification for custom building apps is declining as more vendors spring up in various vertical spaces. So unless you are working for a very, very niche company, odds are that as an in house guy, you will have an increasingly hard time justifying the 'buy v/s build' decision in terms of 'build'. So you have people just buying more which sucks if you are a 'developer' who would much rather build. So in conclusion, I think being an IT developer is fun but less technical than being a developer for a vendor. Like you, I would rather work with a vendor.

Well, I sure hope they turn it around. I think they will. They are getting a few more winners out there with the new Pontiac Solstice and the re-introduction of a retroish Camaro. I love GM and really am hoping for them! They are a great pillar of America.

thanks for the suggestion. I would go this route if I had a server somewhere that I trusted (i.e. not one at my house). I have not yet gotten to the point of needing to rent a server from serverbeach or something, so..

Wow that looks pretty awesome. That's the least expensive one I've seen. Having just had to pay a ton to recover a lot of old pictures off a drive, this looks great. thanks!

The xml data type might be neat or the clr in the database. But, one big improvement hinges around the full text searching. We had full text set up on a large database with sql 2000 and rebuilding the full text index was taking sometimes 10 hours to build from scratch. We switched to 2005 and it improved dramatically (I think we could build it in less than 30 minutes). I believe that if you use full text indexing in your apps, it might really be worth looking at.

Hey anybody here use a remote backup service for their pc's? I've been searching around and looks like you can get 5-10 gb for around $20 a month. Anybody doing this and if so who are you using?

uh no, what about office or sql server? Don't be ridiculous. Comparing MS to Google is a joke. As stated, Google is great at search and not a whole lot else. I believe their bubble is due to burst in the reasonably near future.

Maybe not but in a professional setting an email should have reasonable structure and should atleast be free of spelling errors. If a person can't even send a decent email, I would certainly wonder about them in general.

I hear ya. But I'm pretty sure the 'selectedindex' property of the datagrid is in the viewstate, which you are not supposed to mess with on the client manually (1st it's encrypted, 2nd ms says don't do it as they might change the format). Google selectedindex and javascript and datagrid and see what you can come up with.

You'll need to write a bit of javascript there as most single keystrokes do not, thankfully, cause a postback to the server. Try subscribing to the document.onkeyup event. If you determine that the up or down key was hit, force a postback and handle moving the datagrid selecteditemindex on the server. This will not be super fast as you'll postback a lot, but otherwise, I'm not sure how you can set the selecteditemindex in javascript as I believe it is in the viewstate. Try googling on selecteditemindex and javascript to see if you can make it happen w/o the postback.