Day 07 – Preferred smartphone platform and which do you use?

iOS and Symbian.

This one is actually a tough call.

I truly love the ease of use and pure awesomeness of the iOS platform but it does have its issues.

I currently own a 4th gen iPod Touch and would dearly love an iPhone (5 ;) but as a developer I feel a little left out of the club as there is a hefty tax before being able to tinker away developing my own applications.  Namely, I do not have a Macbook Pro (or the like) to compliment my device.

The Windows Phone 7 and Android platforms come a close second and third respectively.

The Android comes third because although there is little barrier to development, I am not overly enthused about working in Java again.  I’d prefer to stick with the .NET Framework.

As such, the Windows Phone 7 looks very intriguing, the development environment is great, the phones look awesome but here in New Zealand where do I get one?  Though to be honest I wont be getting one as I rely on my employer to supply me with a phone and a Windows Phone 7 device is not high on the list at this time.

So although I do love my iPod Touch and covet the iPhone to some degree, if the Windows Phone 7 would be my platform of choice.

The only phone I use at this point is a Nokia E71 running Symbian.  Not my first device of choice but one I have to live with for the time being.  I do still have an old Okta Touch a.k.a. HTC Touch, but it really only sits on a shelve gathering dust.

Day 06 – Primary geek fuel (snack/drinks)

What ever is handy, really.

Typically an energy drink is involved.  Mainly V or Mother lately.  Sometimes I’ll drink Demon.  On special occasions I’ll drink Red Bull.  As a fallback of course, Coke is it!

As for snacks, anything goes.  Chocolate, pizza, corn snacks, pop corn… You name it, I’ll eat it.

So in the end there isn’t any real single snack or drink that stands out above the rest.

Day 05 – Quick nifty hacks you’re proud of.

I don’t need no stinkin’ hacks!

I was involved in creating a web application that was to have a dashboard as its main page.  This dashboard was built using web parts.  It seems like a good idea except they tended to be a little restrictive in how they looked and the customer had specific requirements to fulfil.

It took a lot of hacking the built in web part controls in order to change how they rendered, and it wasn’t always pretty but the result was the addition of a lot more flexibility in designing how the web parts looked.

I didn’t see the end of that project but I was proud of what I accomplished with that dashboard.

Day 04 – Greatest application written to date.

What defines “greatest”?

I don’t believe I can pin point this to a specific application as a whole.  An application is made up of blocks and a lot of those blocks are boring and sometimes a little monotonous and repetitive.

But some of those blocks are sometimes just pure awesomeness.

Either because they involved doing something new, or were particularly difficult yet I managed to break through and produce some gorgeous code.  Sometimes it is a particularly well designed and executed UI which works like a dream.  Or it could be because of some other equally satisfying piece of work.

It is generally called a science, but for me programming is a lot more like art.  I put a lot of effort into creating the best applications I can but they are not perfect and in a sense never complete, but they all have something about them that makes them special.

Is programming a reflection of life?

Day 03 – What does you day job involve?

Going to work.

I work in a small team with Telecom NZ to build typically .NET based web applications to replace Access and Excel used internally by different business units within Telecom NZ.

I also develop and support a number of Excel macros and .NET desktop applications that interface with a terminal client to automate processes that transact against a terminal based application running within said client.

So my daily job typically involves building applications from end-to-end – from design to test to implementation and deployment, and to on-going support.  I am typically involved in every step of application development.

I design solutions.  I estimate the time and cost involved.  I build and test the application.  I deploy and handle the change requests and the manage incidents raised concerning faults with the applications I support.

Not all incidences are faults!

I also help steer my team towards best practices of development and selecting technologies that help us deliver better products for our customers.  In addition to this I also find tools and utilities to help me and my team mates to be more productive.  I either find something useful already fit for purpose, or write my tools or helpers to make life just that little bit easier.

It is a job I love and I cannot imagine doing anything else.

Day 02 – Preferred programming language?

This is an ever-shifting line.

I currently prefer VB.NET but mainly because my last two jobs spanning six years basically dictated that choice.  But as time goes on I am starting to lean towards C#.

Of course VB.NET wasn’t always my preferred choice.  Previously, I worked predominantly in Java which I enjoyed and it helped that it was free and they were some very good IDEs for it that were free.

VB.NET is not the only language I work with.  The nature of the line of work that I’m in means that I’m versed in a number of different languages.  My main focus is web development so that means I work with HTML and JavaScript, and every application I work on has a database behind it so then there is also T-SQL in the mix.

So as time moves on, technology will advanced and my preferences will change.  I’ll most likely end up in C# some day as all the cool geeks seems to prefer it.  But maybe I’ll stick to my preference and not conform to most others in the .NET environment. 

Perhaps VB.NET is actually more geeky because it isn’t the perceived norm.  Wouldn’t that be a laugh!

Day 01 – Why do you consider yourself a geek?

I think therefore I am… a geek!

I look at the entry for Geek on Wikipedia to see what it has listed there.  This act is possibly a hint towards me being a geek all by itself but does reveal a number of definitions that I identify with.

Interests in technology and computing are apparently good indications of being a Geek.

My earliest recollections of being interested in computers was what was once called Standard 3 or 4, I don’t know what “Grade” they call it nowadays but I was about 9 or 10 years old – nearly 30 years ago.

Somehow I discovered computers and computer programming.  I do not remember how, but I began to read programming books.  Generally I think they tended to be aimed a teaching kids about computers and to program, but sometimes it would be quite serious textbooks.  I do not recall how much I understood, as most of it was pretty much way over my head at the time.

Also around this time, various stores in the neighbour mall had the latest computers on display.  The Commodore 64 being one of the most common on display with actually games running and available to try out.  I recall one game was some text based adventure game, and another was some white on black vector based shooter something like Asteroids.  I do not remember their names but I did spend a lot of time in those stores.

Then one day one store had an Acorn Electron computer on display but it wasn’t running any games, it only had its basic operating system available.  The best thing was I also had access to a programming book from the library on this very same machine and so I spent many an hour at this store copying in the programs I found in this book and seeing what they do – and I loved it.

It was a very sad day when the store eventually removed the computer from the bench they had it on display.

Why I did not grow up to found Microsoft or Google, I do not know but this was when I took my first steps towards Geekdom.