Agile Development

Recent years have seen the growth of the Agile Movement and various agile methodologies. I think this is one of the most important trends in software development today. I'm currently focusing on Extreme Programming in my own work.

Software Design and Architecture

As Martin Fowler tells us, software design is not dead. The agile development and patterns communities actually have a lot in common. I make a lot of use of Design Patterns in my work but these days I try to avoid applying them up front and all at once.

Programming Languages

The first programming language I learned was PLI. In those early years I also worked in Fortran, COBOL, BASIC and in the assembly language for various mainframe computers. In the mid-70s I learned C - the K&R flavor. I also played around with Simula which helped prepare me for learning C++.

These days, I'm quite intrigued by C# and the .Net environment. I'm also experimenting with Ruby, Smalltalk and Java. However, C++ remains the language I use in most of my work.

Windows Development

Most of my work in the last 10 years has been for the Windows platform. I have worked (and still do) using theWindows SDK as well as Microsoft Foundation Classes. I've done COM Programming using native calls as well as through ATL and WTL. Lately I've been working with the .Net environment.