So I’ve taken the plunge back into programming.  I haven’t had the time I was hoping for, but I’ve made some progress. 

Over the last month I’ve dug into C# a bit.  Worked through some tutorials, built some basic little silly apps to continue learning.  Installed SQL Server (Express and full) to play with some database connectivity. 

The learning curve hasn’t been as steep as I was expecting.  I did some Access/VBA programming a couple years back and do have a programming background (BCIT grad!).  This is my first real foray into true object oriented programming.  It’s neat.  Of course, I’m not actually trying to design and build anything from scratch yet. 

I have this idea that’s been percolating in my head for the past few years and I’m seriously considering starting to build it.  I wouldn’t expect it to be THAT tough .. but the challenge is where to start.  It’s web-based, and would be well suited to all the fancy web 2.0 / AJAX type stuff. 

Of course, learning more about CSS (I know the basics) and ASP.NET is a requirement.  But do I need to learn dHTML?  AJAX?  Does it really matter?  I’m sure hoping I can take a layered approach – start with the basics and improve as I go along.

At the very least, my bookshelf is getting full again!

Groove is a pretty cool product.  Always has been.  When Microsoft bought Groove, it became a point of worry for me and many others.   Could they have purchased it purely to kill some competition?

Microsoft did some good things with Groove.  They’ve released (what looks like) a decent server platform for it, elevating it from a peer-to-peer product to one with a stronger reach into the Enterprise.  Groove can now link to, and leech, information from Sharepoint sites. 

Microsoft’s pricing of Groove is a death-sentence for the product.  It’s hard to convince anyone that Groove is worth over $250 per copy (retail).  Not when you can run Sharepoint Services as your server for free, and a product like Colligo to do your offline work (we use Colligo heavily here). 

I have had several clients now evaluate their use of Groove and make the transition to other solutions.  A couple to SharePoint, one completely dropping the functionality and going with a small online storage vendor. 

Same on you, Microsoft, for killing yet another potentially cool product!