Cha-Cha-Changes

At Microsoft, the only constant is change...

It's been a wild ride as the C# Product Manager, but I'm officially changing jobs and to become the Lead Product Manager for the Visual Studio Express product line. Leaving C# was a hard decision, especially because IMNSHO, the C# team is one of the best teams in the company and with C# 3.0 the future of C# is bright (LINQ == LOVE)! So why switch jobs? Well that's simple, Visual Studio Express is a great product and with dedicated product management resources, we can really take it to the next level! Before my new job was created, Visual Studio Express didn't have any dedicated Product Management headcount. Instead it was something that Brian Keller and I did because we knew Express would be a hit and because we were both passionate about the product. Now, we'll actually have a dedicated team for Visual Studio Express :)  

It's been a wild ride in the close to two years I've been the C# Product Manager. Here are just some of my favorite moments I've blogged about:

• MSDN Search adds support for the "#" symbol
• .NET vs J2EE Reloaded
• C# Mascot retires
• C# on Slashdot x2
• Visual Studio 2005 = "Whidbey"
• Netcraft: ASP.NET surpasses JSP
• C# and FCLC Compliance 
• Sun and Microsoft to work together
• .NET beats J2EE for development work in 2004
• Visual Studio Team System Announced
• Java Developer Resource Center is Live!
• Microsoft Announces new Express Products!!
• Show me some E&C!!
• Microsoft products using the .NET Framework
• SD Times: C# Gets Sharper
• Giving Back To The Hobbyist Community
• Announced at PDC: The LINQ Project
• Visual Studio 2005 Released
• Announcing the release of Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

The Microsoft's not using Managed Code Myth
One of the biggest challenges in my old job was that customers didn't think Microsoft was using managed code. Well, the truth is that we have a good amount of managed code in the three years that the .NET Framework has been released including operating systems, client tools, Web properties, and Intranet applications. For those of you that refuse to believe, here's an estimate of the lines of managed code in Microsoft applications that I got permission to blog about:

• Visual Studio 2005: 7.5 million lines
• SQL Server 2005: 3 million lines
• BizTalk Server: 2 million lines
• Visual Studio Team System: 1.7 million lines
• Windows Presentation Foundation: 900K lines
• Windows Sharepoint Services: 750K lines
• Expression Interactive Designer: 250K lines  
• Sharepoint Portal Server: 200K lines
• Content Management Server: 100K lines

Most importantly I wanted to thank the members of the C# community including RDs, MVPs, Codewise partners, all six of my blog readers and everyone else I'm forgetting for your help and constructive feedback over the years.

If any of you are interested in becoming a product manager for C#, we are of course hiring :)

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2005
  Caongrats on the changes! Maybe you'll get on the XBOX team yet :). By the way, I heard that small business accounting and CRM had .Net code in them. Is this an exhaustive list?
• Anonymous
  December 21, 2005
  VS2005 contains 8 times more managed code than WPF? OMG!
• Anonymous
  December 21, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  December 22, 2005
  
  Prove the numbers.
  
  
• Anonymous
  December 27, 2005
  Prove the numbers? Good grief. Do any serious coding? Get a copy of Reflector or Anakrino. Open up the assemblies. Have a look for yourself!
  
  Anyone who does any serious coding with MSFT apps knows this.
• Anonymous
  January 19, 2006
  And what about Office 12?
  It's going to use WPF?
  Thanks.
• Anonymous
  February 23, 2006
  No pude asistir personalmente, pero es muy interesante ver el repositorio de lanzamientos realizados...
• Anonymous
  March 02, 2006
  Office 12 will allow full automation using the .NET framework and C#, VB.NET.  Also integration of Windows Workflow Foundation will enable a signifigant .NET engineered library.
• Anonymous
  March 11, 2006
  Hallo!
  Also, ich bin echt froh, dass ich diese Seite gefunden habe. Da ich schon seit 6 Jahren stolze MS-BEsitzerin bin, weiß ich zwar schon eine ganze Menge (mehr über Erfahrungen als über Bücher gelernt...)
• Anonymous
  March 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  March 16, 2006
  I wonder how MS is dealing with disassembler and reflector tools that allow to get down to function and variable names.
  
  Wonder if obfuscators are used, although, from my experience even the best of the best obfuscators (at least all the trials versions I tried) manage to produce .NET assemblies that crash or hang in infinite loops on complex .NET code. I worked on projects with over 100K lines of .NET code and from 15+ shared assemblies.
  
  Maybe things have changed.
• Anonymous
  March 16, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  March 17, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  April 03, 2007
  No pude asistir personalmente, pero es muy interesante ver el repositorio de lanzamientos realizados