Hello, World

What software developer can start anything new without the proverbial "Hello, World". Since I'm new to this side of things, this will serve as my introduction. My name is Patrick Carnahan, and I'm currently a developer on a product called Team Foundation Server, of which I focus on the Build Automation functionality. More specifically, I mainly design and work on the server code, including web services, data access, and SQL. This isn't where I started my almost 4 year career at Microsoft, however. I was originally hired on to the Version Control team within the same server product in June of 2005. At that point in time I knew nothing about .NET application development, ASP.NET web services, and very little about SQL development. This product has allowed me to interact with these technologies much more than I ever would have working on projects for myself. I have become proficient in SQL, including query performance analysis and debugging. My knowledge of .NET libraries continues to grow every day. I deal with distributed programming models all the time, which keeps my job extremely interesting.  

I am very passionate about the product that I work on and hope to deliver compelling releases in the future. Hopefully this spot will serve as a more general discussion of programming topics, but I will most likely include targeted posts helping users of Team Foundation Server get the most out of the product. I have learned quite a bit since starting my tenure with this company, and hopefully I can begin to share my knowledge with others.