The New Guy
Hi folks. I'm David Ramel, and I'll be posting to Data Driver from here on, taking over for Jeffrey Schwartz, who has moved on to other duties at
Redmond magazine and
Redmond Channel Partner.
I've been an IT journalist for more than 10 years, and I do love programming. Now, I'm not an accomplished coder by any means. I think that left-brain, right-brain thing gets in the way of any true talent (which is why I'm a writer). But, as a former colleague once wrote, I never get tired of making all the bells and whistles work.
Long ago I taught myself C++. That actually resulted in a real, totally original, working executable, but it almost killed me.
I found Java and Visual J++ (remember that?) more my speed. Lately I've been experimenting with C# and Visual Studio.
Since I was recently named the database guy, I've been fooling around with LINQ and ADO.NET and such in my spare time -- which ain't much.
So it was quite satisfying to figure out Data Connections, DataSets, ConnectionStrings and the like and hook up to the good old Northwind database and run some SQL Server queries to populate a DataGridView.
I'm eager to learn more, even if to get just the slightest inkling of what you readers are dealing with out there.
So hey, readers, drop me a line. That's the key message here.
Suggest some good books or Web sites I could use to further my education. Maybe some good tools or add-ons for VS. Let me know what problems you're having, what topics you'd like to see covered, what complaints you have -- heck, even what music you like to listen to while you code. Anything at all (well, you know, almost anything).
Let's make this space an exchange of information and ideas. Let you be the ones to dictate what we cover and talk about.
See, that way, I won't have to work, and I can finally finish that cool C# BlackJack game I've been working on. JK!
Really, just kidding.
Posted by David Ramel on 11/18/2009