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Jeremy D. Miller -- The Shade Tree Developer

Under the hood and working with .Net, TDD, Software Design, and Agile Stuff

My best days as a coder

Last time I was negative and sarcastic, so this time I want to be positive.  My best days as a coder were:

  • When I used to write Shadow IT apps for my engineering team, anytime I wrote something that eliminated a lot of grunt work was a very happy day.
  • I got stuck as a noncoding architect in possibly the worst IT shop in the country, but the biggest joy ever was the day they released the new "Responsibility Matrix" and my team realized that our "System Architect" role was not responsible for one single intermediate deliverable.  That's right, zero responsibility.
  • The day that I first "got" ReSharper
  • The day the ReSharper 4.0 finally became stable
  • The day that I first "got" jQuery
  • The day that my first big system went live -- and worked on the first big transaction.
  • The iteration when a previously troubled project suddenly righted itself and the coding became easy
  • The day I toured a factory and saw my software running at all the receiving doors
  • The day Chad & I decided to quit our previous job
  • The day last month when our new rules engine & rules DSL ran flawlessly for the first time after a 6 week coding sprint
  • The time my friend got an award from the business users in appreciation for the new application we built together. 
  • Any single day I get a complement on StructureMap or somebody writes me to say my blog helped them with something
  • My first ThoughtWorks away day.  If you want to learn to be a good developer, the easiest way to get there is to interact with good developers. 


Comments

Robert G said:

My best days?  

1.  When I finished my code generator (back in the classic ASP days) and was able to outbid our outsourced indian division every single solitary time.

2.  The moment I got OOP.

3.  My first IDE add-in, back in the VB6 days.

4.  The scary, yet exhilarating, first day, when I quit my "safe" job to go and be a consultant.

5.  Everytime I get a complimentary email from non-programmers about this ( www.vbrad.com/article.aspx ) 8 years later.

# November 11, 2008 1:20 PM

jbland said:

. The day my first large scale web-app went live.

. When i got an email from a shareware customer saying some code i wrote is used in the control systems of a nuclear power plant.

# November 11, 2008 1:57 PM

brad said:

"The day the ReSharper 4.0 finally became stable"

I am still holding out for the day R# gets FAST

# November 11, 2008 3:42 PM

Jeremy D. Miller said:

@brad,

No issues on my box w/ R# performance.  I think it would help a great deal if VS.Net actually had the R# functionality instead of it being an add on.

# November 11, 2008 3:48 PM

北京翻译 said:

# November 11, 2008 9:50 PM

mezu said:

- The day my University team blew the competition away with our complex Web system for the Gauteng Province (South Africa)

- The day I was interview about the radio station management app I had coded for the campus radio.

- The day I got into .Net 2.0

- When I wrote my first C# code :)

# November 12, 2008 3:00 AM

Johnny Hall said:

I think that VS having R# functionality built-in would be a shame, since it would automatically shut out 3rd parties from improving the experience, and competition and innovation would die to some extent.  Don't you think?

Any chance of some details or insight into your rules engine/dsl?  

# November 12, 2008 8:05 AM

Johnny Hall said:

Please :)  Forgot my manners there for a minute!  Apologies.

# November 12, 2008 8:06 AM

Dew Drop - November 12, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew said:

Pingback from  Dew Drop - November 12, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

# November 12, 2008 9:00 AM

Christopher Painter said:

Keep in mind I'm a Build/Install guy....

My best days are when I sit back and realize that it's an IJW day ( It Just Works )

Developers kick off builds and It Just Works...

Test servers are staged and It Just Works...

Products are shipped to QA/Production and It Just Works...

Customers install products on thousands of machines and It Just Works...

At that point I've automated myself out of a job and it's time to look for a new one.  

When I leave... It Just Works

The sad thing is pointed haired bosses then sometimes wonder why they ever needed me since the sky never fell but I know better and I just smile.

# November 12, 2008 9:48 AM

David Hofmann said:

The day I learned Python

The day I learned Google Web Toolkit

The day I decided to give up in JSF/JSP/Wicket/WIngs/Web4J/Seam/AnyOtherPageFlowOrientedFrameworkOfTheThousandsAvailableThere!

# November 14, 2008 3:47 AM

Jeremy D. Miller said:

@Mark Turner,

I can definitely relate, but that company name cannot appear anywhere on CodeBetter.

# November 14, 2008 9:44 AM

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About Jeremy D. Miller

Jeremy began his IT career writing "Shadow IT" applications to automate his engineering documentation, then wandered into software development because it looked like more fun. Jeremy previously worked as a systems architect building mission critical supply chain software for a Fortune 100 company and learned agile development practices as a .Net consultant at ThoughtWorks, one of the pioneers of agile development. Jeremy is the author of the open source StructureMap (http://structuremap.sourceforge.net) tool for Dependency Injection with .Net and the forthcoming StoryTeller (http://storyteller.tigris.org) tool for supercharged FIT testing in .Net. Jeremy's thoughts on just about everything software related can be found on his weblog "The Shade Tree Developer" at http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller, part of the popular CodeBetter site. Jeremy is a Microsoft MVP for C#. Check out Devlicio.us!

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