Personal

All good things...

Paul Vick — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:14:00 GMT

As difficult as it is to say, I wanted to let my loyal readers know that after a decade spent working on Visual Basic, I’ve made the decision to change jobs at Microsoft.

It's somewhat hard for even me to imagine just how long I've worked on Visual Basic. I joined the Developer Division (VB's home) over 11.5 years ago to work on OLE Automation. A year and a half after that, I moved over to the VB team proper to work on the compiler's code generator just as we started the move to what would become .NET. In some ways it seems like just yesterday, but in many other ways it feels like several lifetimes ago. In the intervening decade, I've worked on 4.1 versions of Visual Basic (including our forthcoming version), during which time an amazing amount of stuff has happened to the VB language, the VB community, Visual Studio, and development tools in general. The development world looks very different than it did when I started, and that's generally been a wonderful thing.

But as the current release started to wind down from a design perspective, I started asking myself whether it was time for a change. And, after thinking about it quite a bit and talking to quite a few people, I decided that it was. As much fun as it has been to work on Visual Basic, I felt the need to be doing something different than what I've been doing. And so I made the decision that it was time to move on. Sort of.

You see, although the fact that I’m leaving is a big deal in some ways, it’s not as big a deal as you might expect. Even as I physically move to another team, in many ways I’m not really going anywhere. I’ll be carrying with me a title of “Visual Basic Language Designer Emeritus,” meaning that I will continue to participate in the VB language design process and will continue to work to ensure the VB language specification is kept complete and up to date (although I will no longer have primary authorship responsibilities). I’m also still planning to give the VB talk at the PDC in October and talking about all the exciting things we’ve done for the upcoming release plus some ideas about where things will be going in the more distant future.

As to my next challenge, well, there isn't a whole lot I can say about that... yet. I've got some personal ideas rattling around in my head that I'm going to get some time to spend working on, but my day job is going to be working with guys like Douglas Purdy, Don Box and Chris Anderson on the Oslo product. In particular, I'm going to be helping out with the subject of this talk. Expect to hear more from me about it once we've gotten to the PDC.

Even though I’ll be spending a good bit of my time on Oslo, though, I’ll still going to be an active member of the VB community. I’ll still be talking about VB on this blog, opining on the language and it’s future, and, I’m sure, continuing to answer lots of questions. I’ll be continuing to use VB and am really excited where the product is going in this release and the next one (but more about that at the PDC!). Over time, I do expect my place in the VB community will fade somewhat as the new blood on the VB team really starts to come into its own, but for the time being things will continue to go along much as they have been. And, of course, VB will always have a special place in my heart.

This isn't really goodbye but I did want to take the opportunity to thank all of the people out there who have used VB, who've read my blog, and who've written me or talked to me about VB. The VB community has been one of the major reasons that I have enjoyed working on VB so much (and for so long!), and every one of you have played a major role in that. There have certainly been controversies, disagreements, and blow ups, but I really think that VB has one of the finest user communities that I’ve ever participated in, and that I will be lucky if I work on products in the future that attract such a passionate, intelligent, and caring group of people. I can’t say how much I appreciate all the great times that everyone has given me over the years!

So, the blog will continue, I'll still be talking about VB, and soon I’ll have some additional interesting and exciting things from my new job to talk about too. The next ten years should be just as fun as the previous ten have been!

Did Twitter kill my blog?

Paul Vick — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:38:00 GMT

No, not really, just going through another dry spell on the blog. But I have been playing with Twitter, so you can try me there as well: http://twitter.com/paulvick. No promises that I'll keep it up, but...

I haven't given up blogging yet...

Paul Vick — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:11:00 GMT

Just a quick note for those who might care--I haven't given up blogging just yet, even though January was the first time in the history of this blog that I went without saying anything for a month. My wife, kids and I went on a big vacation to the Dominican Republic in January, with a swing by the East Coast for a baptism for good measure, and that took up most of the month! Then, just as I was starting to dig myself out of the hole from that trip, I was off for another week. So needless to say, I've got a good sized backlog of stuff to get out on the blog. I'll apologize in advance for any old news...

define:mortmain

Paul Vick — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:03:00 GMT

In a context completely unrelated to computers or my work, someone gave me a copy of one of those "word a day" calendar entries for the word "mortmain". You can see the fuller definition here, but one definition is:

The oppressive influence of past events or decisions.

Only after I tacked it up in my office did people start pointing out to me the irony.

It was 15 years ago today...

Paul Vick — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:12:00 GMT

It's hard to believe it, but 6/21/2007 marks the 15th anniversary of my permanent arrival in Seattle. I'd spent the summer before in Redmond interning, but in June of 1992, I graduated from college, bought a car, packed up my stuff, and headed out to Seattle. When people would ask me how long I expected to work at Microsoft, I said, "I don't know... I guess I'll stay three to five years and then figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life." Tomorrow, of course, marks the 15th anniversary of starting work at Microsoft.

On the one hand, an incredible amount has changed at Microsoft and in my life since then. On the other hand, I'm still working with the person who had the office next to me when I joined. Life, I guess, is funny that way.

Giving in...

Paul Vick — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:19:00 GMT

Of course, some of the hardest parts of being a parent is giving up, giving in and admitting that you're no longer the freewheeling couple that you once were. Bit by bit, kids chip away at any pretensions you might have of remaining young and/or cool. Thankfully, in my case that isn't really giving up all that much--I mean, I was never really cool, so it's not that much of a loss for me. My wife, on the other hand, was quite a bit cooler than me, and so she's taking it a bit harder. Case in point--after much resistance, my wife admitted that a minivan would be a lot easier to get the kids in and out of than her little purple car. So she caved and now we have a shiny new red Toyota Sienna sitting out front. She hates to drive it, but already we've been putting it to good use...

On the plus side, instead of going directly through a dealership this time, friends recommended we use The Amazing Autowoman. Since Heidi is a buyer's agent (i.e. works for you instead of the dealer), she really focuses on making the buying experience the most painless process possible. I've always hated the fact that when you go to buy a car you always end up with overpriced options that you don't want because "that's what's available." We went looking around the local dealerships to see if they had exactly what we wanted, and none of them did--so, of course, they pushed us to buy something with a different color or thousands more in options. When we called Heidi, we told her exactly what we wanted, she ordered it and we got it for an excellent price! (In fact, what we wanted was the base level of one of the models with NO options. When we got the car, we had to go and buy floor mats because that's usually one of those options the dealership slips in there and charges you extra for. Definitely cheaper to go to Wal-mart!) If anyone is looking for a car, I defintely recommend checking her out!

Unforuntately, there wasn't much she could do for my wife. At least we decided to keep her old little purple car so she can zip around when she's just on her own and pretend...

A little belated crow to eat on 'Battlestar'...

Paul Vick — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:12:00 GMT

I just realized that I've been a little amiss in making amends for some unkind words I had for Battlestar Galatica a few years ago. Right after my wife and I stopped watching, apparently, the writers decided to get their act together and really amp up the quality of the series. Thankfully, my wife's writing mentor's son (how's that for a chain of connection) does the music for the show, and so he managed, through his mom, to convince us to come back a take another look. Once the plot seemed to stop meandering and really ground itself in the present day struggles in our world, I think the whole show really came alive. It still tends to drag at points, but we're back watching it and were genuinely bummed when the last season ended "until 2008."

So let me just belatedly eat my words... (munch, munch) I guess maybe the Cylons do have some kind of a plan after all...

A gift of cheer...

Paul Vick — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:10:00 GMT

In my "five things you might not know about me" blog entry, I mentioned that one of the things that I missed about no longer being in the South was the absence of Cheerwine from my life. What is Cheerwine, you ask? Well, it's a soda somewhat akin to cherry Coke, although with quite a distinctive flavor. The story I had always heard about it was that it was invented at a time (WWI, I believe) when there was rationing of sugar. The soda company was looking for a sweetener, and found that the only thing they could get a supply of was some cherry flavoring that was normally used for cough syrup. They put it in their cola and the rest is history!

I have no idea if this is true or not, and this may sound absolutely disgusting, but I certainly love it. Looking at www.cheerwine.com, it appears they're based in Salisbury, NC, which would make sense since I usually had Cheerwine while visiting my grandparents who lived in Charlotte, just down the road. So there's definitely a sentimental angle to it as well. For a little while, a local (Seattle) grocery story actually stocked Cheerwine in their "specialty" bottle section, but then it disappeared and I only have it when I come home.

However, Chris Williams, a VB MVP and all around great guy, read my blog entry, thought to himself "hey, I sell that in my store," and decided to send me a six pack. So I've been very gratefully indulging in my nostalgic drink. Maybe I'll head downtown and get some Krispy Kremes and then I'll really feel like I'm back home...

What do I actually do...?

Paul Vick — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:45:00 GMT

Back in December, when discussing my bout of writer's block, I said that I should probably write an entry "What the Hell I Do [at Microsoft]," since I think that the question is sometimes a little murky (even to me). Most of my career I was just a "developer" or "manager," but now that I am an "architect," things are a little more complicated.

As far as I can tell, "architect" is such a general title at Microsoft that it's practically meaningless. It can mean totally different things in different organizations. In my case, being an "architect" seems to mean:

I've been around a long time.
I'm a developer (more or less).
I don't manage anybody.

(For those paying close attention, my title when I started this blog was "Technical Lead," which was an even more meaningless term, especially since I used to be a "Technical Lead" on Access when I was much, much, much more junior. And I believe that my title will soon change to "Principal Architect," which only means that if you're an internal Microsoft person, you'll have a general idea of what my career ladder level is.)

I should also be clear that I am an architect working on Visual Basic, not the "architect of Visual Basic." There are at least three other people who work on Visual Basic that share the title of "architect" with me, all of whom do wildly different things. Basically, we're just a bunch of senior developers who didn't want to manage people but were useful enough to keep around anyway.

So that's my title, but what do I actually do? Well, my standard cocktail party answer is "go to meetings and write emails." And (very) occasionally write blog entries. However, if you wanted to pin me down a bit more, I tend to spend my time doing the following:

Attending language design meetings. We tend to have two hour design meetings every week on Monday and Friday to talk about Visual Basic language design. This is where we hash out new ideas, work through details, and deal with followup issues. With where we are in Orcas, it's mostly followup issues at this point, but we should start gearing up to do some early thinking about post-Orcas soon.
Writing the language specification. This is a seasonal activity, so to speak, since it's really only done later in the release cycle when the various individual feature specifications have settled down. It's sort of a last formalization step for all the features and a chance for me to do a pass through everything we've decided. I'm actually just about to start this for Orcas.
Doing community stuff. This includes blogging, going to conferences and giving talks. I don't do a huge amount of this in any one year, but it's something I'm trying to do more of.
Writing code. Amazingly enough, I still do this. It tends to be what we call "long-lead" work, though, stuff that's maybe a little further than prototype but not real production. For example, I did a lot of work on getting the first couple of LINQ CTPs (the pre-Orcas CTPs) out the door. And I'm doing a lot of work right now on some other code that might appear a little at MIX and (I hope) a lot more at the PDC.
Answering questions. As the longest serving member of the language team, I get a lot of random questions from people about design questions, past and present.
Talking to other teams. Whatever I'm working on usually interacts with other teams in some way, shape or form. With LINQ, I spent a lot of time talking with the C# team and SQL team. With the stuff I'm working on now, I'm spending a lot of time talking with other teams. Coordination is frequently the name of the game.
Trying madly to keep up with my email. Like the rest of the universe.

Of course, what anyone does at Microsoft always tends to be a moving target, so I'm sure I can write this same entry each year and it'll be a little different each time. I guess that's what keeps life interesting!

Yes, it's been quiet around here...

Paul Vick — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:15:00 GMT

It's amazing how many viruses babies manage to bring into the house. I think we've been down with something pretty much continuously since we got back. Fortunately, we haven't been all sick at once, but this is starting to get a bit old...

Things have also been extremely busy around work. I've been working on something that I'm hoping we'll have at least a mention of at MIX07 and will probably have more to say about later in the year. I realize there are some threads that have been left hanging, so I'm going to try and tie them up in the coming weeks.

And, finally, the mail on my webserver is now working again, so if you've wanted to send me feedback on the Contact form and haven't been able, you're back in business. Sorry about that!