Sometimes I can't believe what a lucky nerd I am. For the last couple of years I've been wanting to move away from web development and into Windows Forms, but I didn't have a specific need or the time to get dirty with Forms. I'm paid to build web apps. Sure, I could have worked in Windows Forms in my free time. I could have made time to improve my Photoshop and Illustrator chops too while I was at it, but my employer pays for me to be a rock-n-roll web developer. The way I see it, after-hours coding should improve my skills in what I'm paid to do during working hours. As a telecoder productivity is a driving force, I think more so than for coders who report to the office every day with set working hours. The liberty I have to work completely unsupervised means I am also responsible to produce as much for my employer as possible. I owe them that. And besides, HQ needs a damned good reason to keep sending you a paycheck when they never see you, and I've been teleworking for over five years now.
Then again, it's good, it's all good, just the way things are now. I enjoy building web apps, heck yeah. Working with ScottW's dotText and CommunityServer source for fun and after-hours profit the last year or so even made me sometimes forget I was working on something that ran inside a browser.
So now I have marching orders to build a rather substantial Windows Forms application and like Ram's reaction to finding a pure data stream in Tron, "it's just...what I need...right now." The downside is that until I no longer feel like a Windows Forms Nidget, I'll have to go through a CommunityServer Detoxification Progam. It won't be pretty, but there is only so much time available to pursue any given path, and I need to walk the Windows Forms path for a while to get to a level of proficiency I'm happy with.
This also means that in the foreseeable future I won't be posting many entries with a subject that starts with "CSBlogs: " That's difficult for me, truly, because there is so much more to learn and to modify in CS. CSModules and other 1.1 enhancements are going to be great, and I know that I will not be spending the time to upgrade, particularly since I've made so many mods to the 1.0 build.
Apologies to those of you who subscribe to my blog for CS Love. I hope you hang around. CS will still be a part of every MainForm() method I write, every dropdown item I select from the Properties window, every element I anchor to a form. Or not. Shucks, you still might see an occasional CS-related post if I ever need a CS Mod fix, but I gotta tell ya, I'm taking that wild ride on the Windows Forms Carousel of Progress and I just may NEVER look back!