{"id":380,"date":"2008-07-11T05:44:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-11T11:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromthefrontporch.com\/WPBlog\/?p=380"},"modified":"2023-09-18T12:01:13","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T19:01:13","slug":"tgif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/2008\/07\/tgif\/","title":{"rendered":"T.G.I.F."},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had my fingers on the keyboard – “nose to the grindstone” for the last two weeks and am loving it! I finally have a bit of a handle on Visual Studio\/.NET\/C# (C Sharp) and the other development tools being used in the current project for UCLA. I am a consultant-programmer for a department of UCLA …since 1991.<\/p>\n

Programming has always involved a constant re-educating and adding of new skills but every so often things take what feels like a quantum leap. The learning curve this round has seemed particularly steep. I took a look at the timesheets I submit with my invoices for the last several months – a lot of research, testing, reading, i.e. not much coding. There were days when I struggled to get a few lines of code to work and when it did it was more dumb luck than knowing what I was doing. <\/p>\n

Currently there is another programmer and our “boss” at UCLA that make up the team working on the prototype for the new version of software. I have not been alone in the struggle to understand the new paradigm. We use a product called “Go to Meeting” (GTM) to work together. GTM allows us to connect via the internet and any one of us can be the “presenter” – showing our screen to the others. GTM handles the phone conferencing also. This “show and tell” as well as a bit of team coding enabled us to “divide and conquer” – each of us dealing with a piece of the puzzle and then sharing what we learned. It has been fun, interesting, frustrating and annoying all at the same time but now that it is coming together – all worthwhile! <\/p>\n

I have not suddenly become a .NET expert, but I have written some code in the last two weeks…code that I understand, that I know why it works! And just as we are close to having the prototype ready for the “boss” to demo to his “boss”… a new couple of tools are close to being released. Tools that will solve some problems: XAML (“zamel”) and Silverlight. I am NOT afraid! XAML particularly is the programmers’ answer to HTML. Silverlight brings it all together in .NET. It is an exciting time to be a programmer even given the constant feeling that there is too much to learn.<\/p>\n

But, today – on this Friday – I am grateful for the last two weeks – for the opportunity to learn and do something which is fun, challenging and oh, pays the mortgage! I am also very grateful for the team I work with – nice people – professional, interesting, caring – a great team! Still… T.G.I.F.<\/strong> – a good day today and then the weekend to play.<\/p>\n

Just in case your eyes have glazed over because you don’t know and don’t care what .NET or XAML is…Bob shares your sentiments…<\/p>\n

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I have had my fingers on the keyboard – “nose to the grindstone” for the last two weeks and am loving it! I finally have a bit of a handle on Visual Studio\/.NET\/C# (C Sharp) and the other development tools being used in the current project for UCLA. I am a consultant-programmer for a department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-work"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22069,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/22069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beardogco.com\/theroadhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}