Well, tonight I did what I said I would. I went to the ALT.NET UserGroup tonight, with one Garry Stewart speaking, and while listening to these people converse about various .NET related items, I had somewhat of a revelation...

I know nothing.

And yet I feel the bold+underline+italic doesnt quite emphasise how strongly I feel about that, in fact Im almost considering hunting down the HTML (if it exists!) to make that statement flash and blink in alternating colours.

Seriously though, what an experience! It was very refreshing to be in a room of people that know (and I mean really know) what they are talking about. Each and every single person in that room could most likely code rings around me without trying, and when it got to the point where these people are having a good laugh at certain, shall we say, habits or practices that I had no idea were so 'horrible', it really was a moment of revelation (as a side note, I stand by regions... Its just up to the dev to not use them like a retard) for me. And its a good kind... I think. Sort of a wake up call to realise how far I still have to go before I can even approach the skill of some these people, which is disconcerting to say the least. However if you think about it in the long term its definitely a good thing, as it keeps me on my toes and doesnt let me settle too much into my 'comfort zone' of the day-to-day tasks I do on the support contract my company works on.

It actually inspires me want to look into these things and seriously get my hands dirty about what goes on inside Visual Studio. It was fascinating to listen to Garry talk about VIM (and the like) and realise how much we as developers can take for granted with these IDEs, and more to the point what you as a developer actually can do, (if you feel so inclined) to expose whats going on under the hood.

I think its gonna be an interesting few months. :)

Night all