John Papa Joins Visual Studio Magazine
It's not often you get to sign a star to your roster. When you get the chance, you do it. The Vikings, a few years ago, signed Brett Favre. The Packers, years before that, signed Reggie White, and he helped them win a Super Bowl. Many think the Eagles' signing this offseason of Nnamdi Asomugha will propel them to a championship. The Heat signed LeBron James, and ... nevermind; bad example.
I'm delighted to announce that we've landed a star, too. Microsoft's John Papa is officially the newest Visual Studio Magazine columnist. John will be writing a monthly print column called "Papa's Perspective", where he'll be doling out wisdom on his specialty, Web application development. In addition, he'll be writing for this Web site regularly -- look for his articles several times per month.
If you use Silverlight, you probably know John, as he's an acknowledged master. But his expertise goes far beyond that; he's also got a black-belt in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, SQL and more. He's keenly interested in Windows 8 and where that's going as well. In his columns, John will take on various topics. Although many columnists confine their writing to a few areas, John wants to tackle a broad range of stuff. Sometimes his articles will show you the nuts-and-bolts of building an app; other times he may be in "vent" mode, and want to provide his analysis on a trend or technology. Whatever he writes about, you can be sure it'll be engaging.
Microsoft's development platform is continually evolving, and is in a period of transition to the brave new world of mobile computing, including smartphones and tablets, and the cloud. We're in the middle of a paradigm shift, and having a guide like John Papa to help light the way is just what developers need.
Look for John's print column to debut in September, and his online contributions to start this month. Please join me in welcoming him aboard. And find more of his insights at his Web home and Twitter feed.
It's good to have another star on our team. I'm just glad that John didn't have an ESPN special to announce his "Decision."
Posted by Keith Ward on 08/10/2011