About Me :-)

I am a C# and Visual Basic.net programmer of nearly 40 years experience, a Windows desktop app and website developer, and a SQL Server developer/administrator with several years experience of administering and developing for the Microsoft Azure platform. I have also been heavily involved in architecture, technical support and helpline, and troubleshooting. I have been a software developer since 1986, and have developed constantly with Microsoft technologies since 1990.

I am also occasionally a writer/journalist. I contributed a regular Visual Basic column for 2 years for EXE, a UK software development magazine, I also authored a chapter to two editions of a Microsoft Press book called Advanced Visual Basic 6, and was a commissioning technical editor for the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) website in 2000 on a six-month side-contract to launch a new section concerning Reusable Software Components.

Through connections with my agency (The Mandelbrot Set, now known as Curo Resourcing Ltd) I was approached in 1996 by EXE magazine to step in and write a feature article about three-tier architecture using Visual Basic. This came about because of a comment that I made expressing an interest writing in addition to the software development work that I do. I wrote the article and it was duly published. Several months later I was contacted again and asked whether I'd like to become a regular columnist for the magazine writing about Visual Basic. I jumped at the chance and wrote from 1998 until the sad demise of the magazine in 2000.

More information about EXE magazine can be found in this Wikipedia entry, where I'm delighted to see the example magazine cover features the artwork for a feature article I wrote heralding the introduction of Windows 2000.

Shortly after I had become an Associate Developer with The Mandelbrot Set (International) Ltd - often known as TMS - I was invited to join their book team. Their close links with Microsoft had prompted Scott Swanson (Development Manager, Visual Basic Component Team) to agree that TMS were the right dudes to write a book that covered the philosophy of writing Visual Basic applications and components correctly. The goal was to avoid a standard "this is how to code a widget" approach and more to draw upon the experience of each individual member of the team. I personally felt that a concise text concerning the testing phase of a project was appropriate. Testing is a very wide subject to write about, and yet there is very little that I have seen that explicitly discusses testing from a Visual Basic point of view. I have attempted to encapsulate the key principles of VB software testing and present it in my chapter "Well, at least it compiled OK - the value of software testing".

When the book was going through the editorial phase it became clear that the overall approach to the book had worked. It's subsequent success has made us all very proud to have been involved in this project. The pleasure (and pain) that we went through to produce this book became all the more worthwhile when we learned that the book had actually gone on to become the best selling Visual Basic title in the Microsoft Press range. In fact, the book came to be seen as so valuable to developers that Microsoft included an online version of it in their Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Library CD for over a year.

As a result of the tremendous success that the book has enjoyed Microsoft asked us to produce a second edition that was based around Visual Basic 6. While some authors decided to create new chapter entirely I decided on this occasion to add new material to the existing chapter because during the intervening year I had thought about what I had written and decided that I still had things that I wanted to say.

Here's how Microsoft promoted the book:

With the release of Visual Basic 6.0, the Visual Basic product family has added functionality at the very highest level of the developer workspace-fully supporting the next evolution of distributed enterprise development. And for intermediate and advanced Visual Basic programmers looking to push this tool to its new limits, the experts at the renowned Mandelbrot Set (International) Limited have once again delivered the definitive, high-level Visual Basic reference.

ADVANCED MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC 6.0, SECOND EDITION, drills into layers of functionality that will both illuminate and transform your everyday professional programming efforts. You'll find real-world insights and expert problem-solving techniques for a wide range of development issues, including:

• Designing distributed business objects
• Client/server development
• Internet/intranet programming and integration
• Y2K and Visual Basic issues
• Enhanced data access
• Accessibility programming
• Error handling
• Debugging and testing
• Component programming

You'll also find innovative approaches to project management, software engineering, and quality management. The authors' lively, often irreverent writing aims to expand the way you think about and use Visual Basic in the corporate arena. So if you're ready to move up to the next level in enterprise development, step up to ADVANCED MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC 6.0, SECOND EDITION.

The 2nd edition sold for £55-49 ($59-99 in the U.S.A.) and can still be purchased by anybody with a time machine (ISBN 1-57231-893-7).

In 2000 I was very lucky to be asked by Microsoft UK to be the Technical Editor for a new area within the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) website. The specific aim of the site was to provide a Microsoft forum to support developers in the creation of component software.

My role, which was a part-time concern, was to review all material for technical accuracy and relevance to the site and, where applicapable, to liaise with the authors directly to discuss any issues or queries that I had.

As is well known with the Internet things come and go so very quickly these days and the site no longer exists, but it was a very enjoyable experience doing it but it was a absolute honour to be contacted directly by Microsft and asked if I would do this.