A common question I receive at the conferences and user group meetings I attend, is: “How do you find time to develop software with all your duties at CODE Magazine?” My answer to this question is generally: “I find time because CODE is my part time job. I am a developer first and editor second.” I think this is why our magazine has the strong content it does. We focus our articles at the developer in the trenches writing CODE using Visual Studio .NET. The articles I accept are the ones I personally like to read. This is how the CODE Magazine philosophy was born.
I think from my perspective (which is always correct ?? ) that readers like you will like to read the same articles I do. I think this works well for all of us. Like you, I read a number of other technical publications and I find myself going back to CODE articles for techniques and in-depth coverage of the technologies in current versions of Visual Studio .NET. I use CODE as my resource.
A common query from authors is: “How many words can I write?” My answer: “Write until you have covered the topic well.” We generally have long and short articles and because of our fantastic layout we can usually come up with just the right amount of content. I think this is our strength and a weakness in other publications. Some topics just cannot be covered properly in 1500 words, yet other publications are much more restrictive about that than we are at CODE.
Whidbey, Yukon, and Longhorn Philosophy
A recent criticism of some of the other publications is the over abundance of Whidbey, Yukon, and Longhorn material. As I said a few issues ago we WILL concentrate on the currently shipping version, with SOME content on the new technologies. I have kept this promise and I'll continue to keep it. This issue, like recent issues, has some content on Yukon and Whidbey (SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005) and so far, no content about Longhorn.
So why do we have content on SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 but not Longhorn? Well here's my take on Longhorn?right now it's too far into the future and none of my clients are asking about it. As you can imagine, with me as a contractor, my clients move to new software versions fairly quickly after Microsoft releases them. The only guarantee Microsoft can make about its ship date for Longhorn is that it will be later than expected. That's not a criticism. Some of the cool things in store for Longhorn sound great but Microsoft needs time to make the technologies work well and I'd rather wait longer and have them solid rather than rush to market with an OS full of bugs. Longhorn is a huge leap forward. If you want to know what it's like to build a new operating system, read “Show Stopper: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft” by G. Pascal Zachary. This book documents the process of developing the first versions of Windows NT which was peanuts compared to what Microsoft is putting in Longhorn.
So where is CODE headed? We will have more content on Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 in future issues. These products are expected to go into beta about the time you read this editorial. Longhorn content will probably start sometime in late 2005. We haven't even scratched the surface of the current version of Visual Studio .NET.
Have fun,
Rodman
