Aug 31 2007

One year at Intergen

Maybe we should tell the big secret: that all those chimps we sent into space came back super-intelligent.

It is nearly a year to the day that I started at Intergen and it is fitting that I'm giving personal presentation to the office (sort of an Intergen tradition) at the same time.

Below are the highlights of my year at Intergen:

Highlights

Meeting a lot of cool people, both at Intergen and in the wider MS software development community. At my previous job I was pretty isolated from the local software scene and working at Intergen has definitely changed that.
Working with a lot of new technologies: SQL Server 2005, WCF, WF, SSIS, Silverlight.
Learning that writing good code isn't just about getting it to work, but that it also has to be maintainable and extensible. I had already done some work using unit tests with Json.NET but while at Intergen I've learn't a lot about using unit testing with larger software projects and designing for testability.
Working in larger teams and combining TFS, build servers and unit testing. Continuous integration seems so natural now I'm suprised that we're the exception, not the norm.
Having a great time at TechEd 2007. TechEd is something every developer needs to experience at least once. Bug your boss (or come work for Intergen [;)])
Making great strides in my Halo skills (really looking forward to Halo 3 [:)])