Too often, geeks are called upon to leverage their technical expertise (which, to
most non-technical peoples' perspective, is an all-encompassing uni-field, meaning
if you are a DBA, you can fix a printer, and if you are an IT admin, you know how
to create a cool HTML game) on behalf of their friends and family, often without much
in the way of gratitude. But sometimes, you just gotta get your inner charitable self
on, and what's a geek to do then?

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In the past, I've been asked about my
thoughts on conferences and the potential "death" of conferences, and the question
came up again more recently in a social setting. It's been a while since I commented
on it, and if anything, my thoughts have only gotten sharper and clearer.

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Yes, I'm a CTO of a bootstrap startup. (Emphasis on the "bootstrap" part of that--always
looking for angel investors!) And no, we're not really in "stealth mode", I'll be
happy to tell you what we're doing if you drop me an email directly; we're just trying
to "manage the message", in startup lingo.

We're only going to be under wraps for a few more weeks before the real site is live.
And then.... *crossing fingers*

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Apparently I have become something of a resource on programming interviews: I've had three people tell me they read the last two blog posts, one because his company is hiring and he wants his people to be doing interviews right, and two more expressing shock that I still get interviewed--which I don't really think is all that fair, more on that in a moment--and relief that it's not just them getting grilled on areas that they don't believe to be relevant to the job--and more on that in a moment, too.

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Although it seems to have dipped somewhat in recent years, periodically I get requests from conferences or webinars or other presentation-oriented organizations/events that demand that the material I present be "exclusive", usually meaning that I've never delivered said content at any other organized event (conference or what-have-you). And, almost without exception, I refuse to speak at those events, or else refuse to abide by the "exclusive" tag (and let them decide whether they still want me to speak for them).

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A couple of people had asked how the story with the company that triggered the "I Hate Programming Tests" post ended, so I figured I'd follow up with the rest of that story, and some thoughts.

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It's official: I hate them.

Don't get me wrong, I understand their use and the reasons why potential employers give them out. There's enough programmers in the world who aren't really skilled enough for the job (whatever that job may be) that it becomes necessary to offer some kind of litmus test that a potential job-seeker must pass. I get that.

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With my most recent blog post, some of you were a little less than impressed with
the idea of using types, One reader, in particular, suggested that:

Your encapsulating type aliases don't... encapsulate :|

Actually, it kinda does. But not in the way you described.

using X = qualified.type;

merely introduces an alias, and will consequently (a) not prevent assignment of

a FirstName to a LastName (b) not even be detectible as such from CLI metadata

(i.e. using reflection).

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Recently, having been teaching C# for a bit at Bellevue College, I’ve been thinking
more and more about the way in which we approach building object-oriented programs,
and particularly the debates around types and type systems.

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In incarnations past, I have had debates, public and otherwise, with friends and colleagues
who have asserted that HTML5 (by which we really mean HTML5/JavaScript/CSS3) will
essentially become the platform of choice for all applications going forward—that
essentially, this time, standards will win out, and companies that try to
subvert the open nature of the web by creating their own implementations with their
own extensions and proprietary features that aren’t part of the standards, lose.

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