 Newsreel
Products & Services
Web Watch
Software Update
Resource Directory
Events Diary
Articles
The Magazine
Subscribe
Contact Us
Search DNJ Online |
Issue 22
Angie’s over the moon when she’s appointed .NET Guru, but soon finds herself caught up in a dangerous game.
 Monday
Greg’s been at it again, bragging to his fellow IT Directors about his team’s in-depth expertise without checking first whether it actually exists. As a result I’m now the TEL consortium’s .NET Guru, and emails are flooding in from colleagues desperate to know more about it. It’s just like the XML Guru business, although this time I don’t mind since (a) it’s pretty exciting stuff, and (b) Carl and Denny are livid that I got the job instead of them. Apparently the clincher was my browser-hosted Drivers Allowances client, which Greg re-branded as ‘a benchmark for platform-neutral .NET applications’. If .NET really was just a matter of COM-assisted DHTML it’d be easy, but there’s a bit more to it than that, as I’ve discovered from trawling through MSDN. For the moment I’m managing to stay one step ahead of the emails, but it’s touch and go.
Tuesday
Carl and Denny are holding me personally responsible for the ‘iniquities’ of .NET architecture, which mainly involve having their precious C++ code executed by the same runtime that handles VB. They seem genuinely upset, which would be funny if they weren’t so serious. I tell them it’s not even certain that we’ll go the .NET route yet, and they say we’d better not, or they’ll be off to somewhere where ‘executable still means executable’. On that basis I decide not to mention the possibility of a switch to C#. C&D still think they hold all the cards, but they’re in danger of becoming old-tech dinosaurs. I’m worried about them.
Wednesday
La Défense, and the Consortium’s first .NET strategy meeting. I’m in the chair, with overall responsibility for .NET adoption planning, not bad for a girl who was churning out VB screens just a couple of years ago. Everyone agrees that XML/SOAP is the direction we’re heading in anyway, while Web Services and the Application Center server will hopefully solve problems we thought we’d have to deal with ourselves. Timescales are still a bit vague though, so we can’t commit to a .NET-based TEL Phase III, which won’t please the big bosses. At coffee, Jurgen says there’s a rumour that the Consortium’s AS400 teams are working on a CORBA-based anti-NET counter-proposal. He seems to think it’s a joke, but this isn’t my first experience of AS400 counter-bids. I’ll see Mike about it first thing in the morning.
Thursday
Mike already knows about the AS400 plan (naturally!). He says our own Brian Wood’s behind it, and that he’s going to ‘nail that bastard once and for all’ when it comes out. I say this shouldn’t be about personalities, but shut up quickly when I see the look he gives me in return. He then says he thinks Brian’s got a spy in the Desktop team, and quizzes me about my (working) relationship with Liam from the AS400 department. That’s ironic, given the way that Liam once helped me, but I decide to shut up about that too, and settle for righteous indignation. Mike apologies (a first, surely), but says that whoever the mole is, they’ll be history once he catches them. Desperate to get away, I agree, and flee to the chocolate machine for some comfort.
Friday
This .NET business is becoming more political than technical, and I don’t like it. As I expected, Greg wants me to commit to .NET for TEL Phase III, probably so that he can show off to the other IT directors. I’ve said no, which is apparently a very bad move. I know who’ll get the blame if it all goes wrong though, so I’m sticking to my guns. Meanwhile Mike’s still giving me funny looks about Liam, AS400s and Brian’s mole (or is it because of Phase III?). On top of all that I really need to talk to Carl and Denny about C#, which I’m dreading. Ed says they’re in the canteen, and I decide to catch them off home ground. When I get there though, they’re already in deep discussion - with Brian Wood. Suddenly I’m a lot more worried about them than before.
Top of the page
Issue 22 - Contents
< Previous Angie -- Next Angie >
|
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
Issue 9
Issue 10
Issue 11
Issue 12
Issue 13
Issue 14
Issue 15
Issue 16
Issue 17
Issue 18
Issue 19
Issue 20
Issue 21
Issue 22
Issue 23
Issue 24
Issue 25
Issue 26
Issue 27
Issue 28
Issue 29
Issue 30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
And the adventure continues at the HardCopy web site! More |