Comments on: Office developer

By: diggerboot

diggerboot — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:05:54 +0000

Simon, couldnt agree more, in my opinion you’ve summed up the “animal” exactly, an office developer is invariably exactly as you’ve described them .
They’re invariably not what I’d call programmers but rather business focused users with some programming skills. In my experience they are often focused on one of the office apps (eg Excel) but have enough knowledge to integrate solutions with others

Jon

By: Dennis Wallentin

Dennis Wallentin — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 09:14:10 +0000

Marcus,

You’re too kind ;) According to my wife that’s not true… Thanks for the PCMCIA which I will add to my never ending list of acronyms.

Kind regards,
Dennis

By: Marcus

Marcus — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:27:17 +0000

Now Dennis, that’s just plain scary recalling that (OBAD). I think we’ll have to start calling you “Steel Trap” – as in: He’s got a memory like a…

I wasn’t aware what WPF and WCF stood for. But you must remember that other acronym PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorise Computer Industry Acronym’s.

Regards – Marcus

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:51:54 +0000

Ross LINQ is roughly a neater way of doing:
strSQL = “SELECT…”
strSQL = strSQL + “FROM…”
etc
Tom – fair point on most peoples understanding of Office developer!
Dennis I have a good idea of their meaning but have never delivered working solutions to paying clients using them, and I don’t see any of that on the horizon either.

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:05:02 +0000

I have seen all 3 Dennis, but the only one I really know anything about is WPF, a GDI “replacement” in .Net 3. – I guess then that WCF is a replacement for hwnd type things? – well in part anyway? LINQ i have heard people talk about but dont know what the hell it is.

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:57:25 +0000

If you define your career as IT focused (i.e. your CV or business offering most likely to first hit the CIO’s desk) rather than business focused (bound for the CFO’s, COO’s or CEO’s desk ) then chasing the latest MS technology may be a wise thing to do.

To most business people an office developer is somebody who finances and builds office real estate. How they most likely see people like us is as data/reporting analysts who happen to have the technical skill to extract, load and present their business data. If that person happens to be an accountant with VBA skills or an IT guy/gal who’s comfortable working at the coal face of business matters little as long as the job gets done.

Most such data analysts use Excel as their primary tool because its ubiquitous and its “good enough”. If or when something better (and by better I mean significantly better) comes along (and is widely adopted) then it’ll be the time to add that technology to the tool set.

Tom

By: Dennis Wallentin

Dennis Wallentin — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:10:05 +0000

Hi all,

For some time ago Marcus used the term OBAD (Office Business Application Developer) which I find to be excellent.

Given the additional input (once again from Marcus here) we can expand it to be something like:

EBAD –> Excel Business Application Developer
etc…

The way MSFT promote and view for instance VSTO they show their ignorance about the larger group of OBADs (and its subgroups).

A recent article in MSDN Magazine (August ’07 – Office Apps Extend Your VBA Code with VSTO) include the following:
LINQ (Language-Integrated Query)
WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
WCF (Windows Communicating Foundation)

How many of You know what these expression means?

Kind regards,
Dennis

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:51:02 +0000

!!!!Please ignore above posted before I’d finished!!!!!

I think an office dev is a person who deliveries solutions mainly through an office UI, they can use any tech behind that.

Having a degree in Software Engineering does not make you a better programmer.

Peaches and Fifi can not write the same software. Fifi looks cooler to other programmers, Peaches (the little minx) looks more useful to businessmen. One may be better than the other, but their fields do not define this.

>> Does this all tie in with the rather difficult (and ongoing) birth of VSTO? Because I’m sure nothing in Office itself changed to re-classify a bunch of people.
>> And how many of these are aware of VSTO and have the capacity/budget/authority to purchase and install all the required components, let alone the time to invest to learn it?

Might VSTA help in this area?

VSTO is as far as I can see a Joke, I would think MS would want to bush under the table ASAS, no matter how good it is, its useless unless it works reliably, we’re not talking about social networking websites here, were talking about $!

By: Ross

Ross — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:40:09 +0000

I think an office dev is a person who deliveries solutions mainly through an office UI, they can use any tech behind that.

Having a degree in Softwear engineering does not make you a better programmer.

Peaches and Fifi can not write the same softwear. Fifi looks cooler to other programers, Peaches (the little minx) is look more usefull to bussinemen. One may be better than the other, but there feilds do not define this.

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 07:49:20 +0000

Marcus – Mouseketeer – great name. I’ve seen the same ‘Office is MM’ attitude.
Dick – inspired by the Geldofs
Dermot I agree, I guess my point (there was one?) was MS seems to have lost sight of the value of business knowledge. (Their push towards VS VSTO etc seems to preclude people with a business background.)