The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard - Monday, February 23, 2009
Demanding rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty

Episode 8

Brian Prince joined Microsoft last year as an Architect Evangelist.  In this interview, he talks about the experience and how it is different from any company he has worked for in the past.

I deal with a lot of smart, passionate people with years of experience in technology. 

I've noticed that these folks love to talk about and write about the next generation of software and advanced topics in software development.  This is great because it gives me a chance to learn new things from the smart people in my life. 

Unfortunately, not everyone is ready for advanced topics.  Developers who are just starting their careers need to understand the basics of languages, programming constructs and relational databases before diving deeper into these and other areas.  These basic topics are often less interesting to experienced developers but they are vitally important.  And who is better capable of explaining them than an experienced developer or architect?

I'll address this partial vacuum in a new Back To Basics feature on this site.  In this feature, I'll explain some fundamental concepts of software development, assuming little or no experience on the part of the reader.

The feature begins this week with a set of articles entitled SQL Server 101, in which I'll describe the basics of SQL Server and relational databases.  This will tie in with a talk I'll be giving at the West Michigan .Net University April 4 in Grand Rapids, MI.

Episode 7

Microsoft Architect Evangelist Darryl Hogan loves his job.  In this interview, Darryl explains what he does why it rocks.

Episode 6

In this interview, Joe Fiorini discusses how he and his team created the meetinbetween.us application that won the 2008 Rails Rumble contest.

Episode 5

BizTalk Server is one of those products that many people have heard of, but few are familiar with. 

In this discussion, Monish Nagisetty briefly and clearly explains the purpose and uses of BizTalk Server messaging

Episode 4

I've attended two conferences where Alan Stevens helped to make Open Spaces a success.  In this interview, Alan describes open spaces technology and explains his role in the process.

Episode 3

In this interview, Jason Follas explains spatial data types, which were introduced in SQL Server 2008

Episode 2

Steve Smith sat down with me to share his ideas on increasing performance and scalability in your web applications.

Episode 1

I spoke with Telerik Developer Evangelist John Kellar at CodeMash about how to effectively interview tech people on camera and about the DevLink conference.

View John's video interviews at EdgeOfDev.com

Episode 0

I'm starting a new feature on this site.  I'll be publishing video interviews of smart people who are passionate about technology.

In Episode 0, I describe my goals for this feature.