I’m reading this morning that OpenSilver has support for VB.NET on their roadmap. OpenSilver is an open-source reimplementation of Silverlight using WebAssembly to help developers who have Silverlight code-bases. This quote from Userware (the CEO of the company behind OpenSilver) is spot on:

David Ramel at Visual Studio Magazine recently asked “Did .NET MAUI Ship Too Soon? Devs Sound Off on ‘Massive Mistake’”

I spoke with Jason Haley last month on his No Availability Podcast about invoicing, tools, and long term clients as a freelancer. This was a lot of fun. I’ve been enjoying Jason’s new podcast a lot – it is fun to hear other ideas and perspectives on freelance software development.

People often refer to the polarization of our culture, and it seems to me that this polarization extends to more than just politics. You see it in things as mundane as software development, where various thought leaders will make statements such as “if you aren’t using <X methodology/framework/etc.>, then you are doing it wrong”.

Quick tip: If you are using SQL Prompt and suggestions don’t seem to be working in a new database (but ARE working in other databases), it may be that you have it set up to only show suggestions for certain databases:

So I guess we are supposed to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of .NET this week. I found the Twitter hashtag that we are supposed to be using particularly grating: #dotNETLovesMe

I really appreciate this fantastic post from Steve Barnegren on clean code. Certainly I’ve used the term “clean code” plenty of times, but it is definitely a fair criticism that the term is vague and means different things to different people. I’m 100% on board with using better, more precise terms, such as “maintainable code”.

I spend a fair amount of my time as a freelance programmer gathering requirements. Also, with a few start-ups under my belt, I’ve seen how easy it is is to build the wrong thing due to a misunderstanding about potential customers and their needs.

It is always fascinating to me how many programmers want to debate whether or not 10x programmers exist. For the last several years, any post I’ve read on this question has been either a firm: no, they don’t exist, or even if they do exist, they will be vile people so don’t hire them.

It seems to me that this article, Don’t rush to machine learning, reminds us of an important rule that we often forget: start simple. Many times people try to overengineer a solution, when an 80%, just-good-enough solution will fit the purpose.