Now that Chris Anderson’s most excellent Essential Windows Presentation Foundation has transitioned to the physical world, I thought I’d share my foreword:

Thank God there weren’t more people like Chris Anderson when I was making my living outside of Microsoft.

I work at Microsoft now (two doors down from Chris, in fact), but not all that long ago, I was an instructor at a Windows developer training company. My brethren and I were led by a deep-thinking PhD candidate that applied the same rigor he applied to a scholarly pursuit that had to stand up to the “crush or be crushed” mentality of academia. We learned how to think clearly as a defense mechanism and to communicate clearly as a survival technique. If we didn’t do it to his exacting standards, he’d sweep us aside and redo our work before our eyes (we learned to call it “swooping” and you worked hard to avoid the phenomenon).

In a similar fashion, we learned to ignore the tutorial and reference materials produced by our vendor of choice, because it was clear that however clearly they may or may not be thinking inside their hallowed walls, it was certain that they weren’t up to communicating it with the rest of us. Arguably, our whole job for close to a decade was “swooping” Microsoft itself, redoing their materials in the form of short course, conference talks, magazine articles and books. We called it the “Microsoft Continuing Employment Act,” treating it like a pork barrel entitlement program that kept us in the style to which we had grown accustomed.

In fact, we made a nice living traveling the country saying things like, “remember to call Release,” “avoid round-trips” and “ignore aggregation” because these were clear guidelines that distilled for developers what Microsoft couldn’t manage to say for itself. That’s not to say that there weren’t clear thinkers inside of Microsoft (Tony Williams and Crispin Goswell being two of my very favorites), but the gap between the beginner and the reader of such advanced writings was largely unfilled in those days.

With this book, that gravy train has run right off the track. Chris Anderson was one of the chief architects of the next-generation GUI stack, the Windows Presentation Framework, which is the subject of the book you’re now holding in your hands. You’d have thought that the very nature of the architecture job, that is, to make sure that the issues deep, deep inside were solved properly so that others could come along and build the trappings that made it into plain sight, would disqualify him from leading the developer from “go” to “whoa,” but that’s not the case. Chris’s insight allow him to shine a light from the internals of WPF to those standing at the entrance, guiding you through the concepts that form the foundation of his creation (and the creation of more than 300 other people, too, let’s not forget).

As the author of a competing book from another publisher, I can’t say that this is the only book you’ll ever need on WPF (or they’d have me in front of a firing squad), but I can say this with certainty: it belongs on your shelf within an easy reach. I know that’s where my copy will be.

I’d like to provide a list of the best WPF resources, including real-world apps, free web resources, SDK docs, samples, blogs, etc. If you’ve got something that belongs on that list, I’d love to hear about it. Thanks!

Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes.

Enjoy.

Jimmy, a very polite 14-year old student of Washington Manor Middle School in California had an assignment to interview a computer programmer. I have no idea how he found me, but I did my best to help him out.

[jimmy] Thanks for your time! Here are the questions…

[jimmy] How long have you been working in this profession?
[csells] I’ve been a professional programmer of one kind or another since I was 20 years old, so 17 years.

[jimmy] How did you realize you wanted to be a computer programmer?
[csells] I had three professions in my mind as a child, first magician, then architect and by the time I got my first computer in high school, I decided I wanted to be a programmer. From that point on, I was pretty much a full-time programmer who took time out during the day to go to school.

[jimmy] What kind of education did you have to have?
[csells] BS in Computer Science from the U of MN, MS in Software Engineering from the Oregon Graduate Institute

[jimmy] What are some of the classes you took in High School that maybe helped you in your career choice?
[csells] The course that made me want to become an architect was my Jr. high school drafting courses. The thing that made me want to be a programmer was using first my friend’s computer and then mine. By the time I got to my programming classes in high school, I knew much more than the teacher (and, in fact, he would often pull me out of my other courses to fix other people’s computer problems).

[jimmy] Tell me about a typical day in this job.
[csells] For the last two years, I’ve been involved in an “incubation” project at work, which means that I’m in a small group of engineers doing advanced product development thinking. We look at a bunch of problems that developers are having building software on the Microsoft platform and build various experimental pieces of software to see if they would be useful in helping developers build applications that are more secure, more robust and more full-featured, while still helping them to build them faster.

Toward that end, my day is filled with design meetings where we run design ideas past our peers, build our ideas and then try to use them to build applications the way our customers would. I spend about half of each day in verbal and written communication, e.g. meetings, presentations, emails and design documents, and half the day writing code, specifically C#/.NET.

[jimmy] What skills are important to be successful in this position?
[csells] Communication, both written and verbal, customer empathy, logical thinking, debate, compromise and willingness to live with vague, under-specified problems and requirements.

[jimmy] How would you describe the responsibilities of the position?
[csells] With my team, it’s my responsibility to not only generate and try new ideas, but also to push the good ideas into customers’ hands. That can include everything from forming my own product team, to forming ad hoc “virtual teams” from existing product groups around the company, to “selling” my ideas to product teams to get them to ship them with their products.

[jimmy] What long and short term problems and opportunities do you think this career faces?
[csells] Short-term, there’s a shortage of computer science graduates, so high-tech companies, Microsoft included, are doing what they can to make sure that they attract smart, motivated, educated, experienced software folks. This includes higher salaries, better working conditions and better benefits, all of which is good for folks in this industry.

Long-term, software engineering is changing rapidly, both how we build and apply our development tools and how we turn our craft into an actual engineering discipline. The tools I’m using this year are more full-featured, more rigorous and, at the same time, simpler than the tools I used even a few years ago. I don’t anticipate that change slowing down any time soon. We’ve got a long way to go before we’ve got a solid set of principles that can make software into the same kind of measured, certifiable activity that engineering fields like civil, electrical and mechanical engineering now enjoy.

[jimmy] What are the positives and negative about being a computer programmer?
[csells]
Pros:

• flexible work environments
• fun work (if you like bending a computer to your will)
• rapidly evolving
• challenging
• important — the entire world is being remade by software

Cons:

• vague requirements from customers that don’t really know what they want (but they sure know what they *don’t* want…)
• engineering discipline left up to individuals, leading to a wide-range of software quality
• lots and lots of work to do, making it very easy to balance the work/home life far away from non-work related activities (all work and no play makes Jimmy a dull boy : ).

[jimmy] Is there anything else about being a computer programmer that you would like to tell me about?
[csells] If you’ve got the disposition, programming and related software engineering work can be extremely rewarding, not just for the fun and satisfaction of taking control of a tiny virtual universe, but also because of the real difference software has and continues to make on real people’s lives. Over the last three decades, I believe that software has literally changed the world for the better and I see that trend accelerating. Bottom line: It’s fun, flexibly, in-demand and makes the world a better place – what could be better than that?

So, I’m sitting in my office pair programming with Geoff Kizer when my phone rings. It says “Microsoft” on the display, so I figure it’s one of my brethren.

“Hello?”

An angry voice replies, “I’m calling you because your technical support sucks and I’m tired of being put on hold!”

“I’m sorry? Are you a Microsoft employee?”

“No! I’m a *customer*! I’m trying to use Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and it doesn’t work!”

“Oh.” Now I’m reaching way, way back into my distant technical phone support past. First, defuse the anger by empathizing with the customer. “Well, on behalf of the 70,000 Microsoft employees, I’d like to apologize.” That was a little over the top — have to dial it down a bit next time…

Second, try to take things back a step and establish a rapport with the customer. “My name is Chris. What’s yours?”

Calming down a bit, “John.”

“OK, John. I can’t claim to know everything there is to know about Vista, but I’ll answer your questions if I can.”

“How do I get the icons to be smaller on the desktop? No matter what the resolution is, they’re always huge! I want them to be small like on XP!”

“Are you at your computer now?”

“Yes.”

“OK. I know you can change the icon size on the desktop. Let you look around a little.” At this point, I’m opening up the Personalize control panel, finding nothing about desktop icon size. I used the cool narrow-as-you-type Help. Nothing about icon size (although I can change the icons themselves). Now I’m cursing Vista myself. “I don’t see it here,” I admit to John.

At this point, I look up and notice I’ve gathered a crowd outside my office, including my boss and his boss, all laughing because a) dealing with angry customers is not the most fun job in the world and b) they’re glad it isn’t them.

At this point, Mr. Kizer reaches over to my computer, right-clicks on my desktop and shows me the context menu option that actually changes the icon size, which I share with John, making sure he’s happy with this solution before moving on.

And move on we did. John has one more problem, which I repeat back to him to make sure I’ve gotten it right, emphasize with him and try to help him reproduce it. When we can’t, I send him an email, asking for some additional data when he is able to reproduce the problem so that I can follow up with a fix, apologizing again for the trouble he’s had today, both with Vista and with tech support.

After about 15 minutes, John thanked me and asked me if I was in Sales or Support.

“No. I’m a developer,” which was close enough to true for your average person.

He then told me how he got to my phone in the first place. Apparently, he had called the main number and was tired of being put on hold by our support, so he told our voice-recognition system that he wanted to speak to “Sales,” I’m guessing to give them a piece of his mind. That day, “Sells” was enough of a match to “Sales” and suddenly, I’m the one talking to John.

At no point during this call did I consider sending John somewhere else for help. He’d already been through our support and didn’t like it. I can’t make people purchase Microsoft products. I can’t make people like Microsoft products. However, that one day with that one customer, I was going to do my best to help one customer to not hate Microsoft. Sometimes that’s all you can do and I was proud to do it.

Today, Sara Williams, ex-Developer Relations Group (the folks at MS that were allowed to speak to developers before we had blogs), ex-MSDN head and ex-Microsoftie has given birth this morning to a 5 lb. 4 oz baby girl. Both mother and daughter are doing well (and father is resting fitfully, having lost a month of sleep with the arrival of his daughter a bit earlier than planned).

However, their daughter does not yet have a name and, on the suggestion of Mr. Box, I am soliciting suggestions. If your suggestion is picked, you will be awarded a signed book of your choice (regardless of whether I wrote it or not). Have at it!

If you can’t wait for Programming WPF to be on the shelves (I know I’m having trouble), then you can read the chapters as we write them. These chapters have not gone through the technical reviewing stage or the copy editing stage, but they’ve been through the baptism of fire that is co-author review and both Ian and I are nuts for grammar, so they should be pretty readable. Enjoy.

I gotta get one of these (the video conferencing robot, not the dude)!