Future desires (how Scott Hanselman changed my life)

I often think about the future and what it holds. Thoughts of my relationship, my AFL team and where I'll live are fairly common, but it's my career that holds the most interest, the most unknowns and the most fear.


I'm sure in the dim, dark recesses of history I wanted to be a fireman, or a policeman. One thing is certain though, I never wanted to be a teacher. Both of my parents are teachers and I realised pretty early on that this wasn't going to be my career choice. I even reviled at the idea of becoming a teacher.

Now, having just entered the workforce, I find myself becoming what I never wanted to be, and oddly enough, I don't mind it. Whilst I wouldn't want to deposit all of the onus on one particular person, Scott Hanselman is the chief architect.

More specifically the weekly podcast he does, Hanselminutes.

A 2 hour round-trip commute to work leaves a lot of time for the brain to wander. Initially music was 'used' to fill in the time, but in many respects that's a waste of time. So podcasts became the food for my brain, and it was only a natural progression that I would listen to technology podcasts.

Now podcasts such as This Week in Tech are great to listen to, but I had the feeling that I wasn't really learning anything apart from the weekly news. But Hanselminutes provides something else, something much more valuable.

Hanselminutes provides knowledge and Scott is essentially my teacher.

Each week, I'm informed about some obscure framework I've never heard of, or some a new programming language I've barely looked at, if heard of it at all. Each week is like a small seminar with someone who's interesting, smart and has something cool to discuss. And it's not even always technology related. Easily one of the best episodes was his discussion with Gary Schmidt about living with diabetes and how to 'overcome' it. Truly fascinating stuff, and while diabetes doesn't affect me, or anyone I know (for which I am thankful for), it's invaluable being able to understand what some people have to live with.

Hanselminutes provides a lot of personal brain food. It deals with topics I find interesting, but only on a personal level. It doesn't inform about working as a software developer as much as I would like. Which is where This Developers Life comes in.

Produced by Rob Conery & Scott Hanselman, This Developers Life is a podcast about stories and stories are the source of all knowledge.

I found this podcast via Scott's twitter feed and since then I've been hooked. It scratches the other itch, feeds the other part of my brain. The part that wants to become a great software developer, someone who is respected and admired, but more importantly someone who teaches. This Developers Life is filled with interesting people telling stories about work, about life, but more importantly, about software development in the real world.

When I left university, degrees in hand, I wanted a job. A regular source of income and some experience. Now I want more. Thanks to Scott and Rob I want to learn more, teach more, help more and be a better software developer. It helps that I'm convinced that I "Make Shitty Software... With Bugs!" and that if I don't strive to improve, I'll never be good enough.

People influence your life and career. In this day and age sometimes people will influence you without them even realising it. It's about finding the right people for you.

I'm pretty happy with Scott and Rob.

I'm sure my parents are laughing at me right now, but the best bit is; I really don't care.

Microsoft is late to a party that has a tiger in residence

This week I had the chance to attend a 2-day free workshop on Windows Phone 7. It was hosted by Microsoft, presented by Nick Randolph (blog) and was a developers deep dive into the upcoming Windows Phone 7 release. Whilst I found the workshop to be a very interesting and entertaining experience, I have a number of thoughts about the Windows Phone 7 OS itself.

The problem when discussing any new smartphone is the animal in the room, the iPhone. The idiom typically has it being an elephant, but I think in the case of the iPhone it's more like a Tiger. It's nice to look at, you can appreciate it, but given half a chance will claw your face off and feast on your carcass. This must be how the iPhone competitors must feel as it's market share and mind share tear their profits to shreds.

Anyone who has used previous Windows Phone releases would attest to the complete lack of mobile-centric design in large portions of the device. This was slightly mitigated by being a corporate centric phone and face it, corporations don't care about usability that much *cough* IE6 *cough*. With the design of the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) interface, they threw all that out and started from scratch, much to my delight. Their Metro user interface is a monument to the new Microsoft culture. It feels like the fruits of a corporate cultural journey that was started with the Office 2007 Ribbon UI. Microsoft is learning, and learning fast. Which is why it's unfortunate that they are late to the party.

At the workshop, as Nick was presenting various sections on application development, I couldn't help but feel as if they are late to a party that started with the release of the iPhone 3G. Apple grabbed the hearts, minds and wallets of the connected generation with the iPhone 3G. They mastered their hardware, grabbed a lion's share of the developer thought-space, and made every other device look obsolete in the process. Android has been fighting a rearguard action, slowly making inroads with each release, but they are still a long way behind.

It's a marketplace that has a dominant leader and a solid pack of contenders nibbling at it's heals. It is into their pack that Microsoft has thrown itself, jostling for a piece of the market share. WP7 is going to have to be so good for them to start to even think about biting into the iPhone's lead and I don't think that it is.

To be successful, WP7 is going to need a couple of things to happen:

1. Marketing will need to be clear, concise and everywhere. Billboards, TV, Newspapers, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and forums all need to be a place to generate buzz and interest in the phone.
2. Updates will need to be frequent. One of Apple's key weaknesses, and Androids strengths is the speed at which OS updates are delivered. If Microsoft can harness this and do good updates frequently then this can only help.
3. Developers will need to brought on board very quickly. Dev's such as myself should be a target, but getting current iPhone or Android developers to port their applications to WP7 must be a critical target. Not only will this generate talk, but it will reduce the barrier when  migrating to WP7.
4. Good quality phones are the last thing. WP7 is a great operating system, but having a clunky, slow, unattractive phone will make this less appealing as a consumer device.

It may seem like I'm being quite negative in regards to all of this, but there is so many things I like about WP7, whether it be the UI or the development experience (I may do a future post on my development experiences on both WP7 & iPhone).

So my concern is Microsoft is about 3 years too late to the party, and the party now has a resident Bengal Tiger.

As this is my first serious blog post, please excuse the slight lack of structure, I shall be working on it as much as possible into the future. Also, comments and discussion are most welcome, both here and on Twitter (@aperebus)

Oops, she broke :(

You may have noticed that my webpage is currently broken. This is not by design, but by me having a poor understanding of how DNS and domains are configured at my host.

A lesson has been learnt and hopefully it will be back online quick smart. I have also decided to move to alastairpitts.com, which was the root cause of the breaking.

I shall endeavour to reduce downtime in the future

A blogging trope

Welcome to my blog!

I'm going to be using this as a place to talk about things that interest me. The topics are likely to be diverse and ranging from politics to programming to advertising and AFL (Aussie Rules).

I hope I entertain and you enjoy my blabbering.

Alastair