Gotdotnet - 2000-2008 - Never Say Die

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It launched on Nov. 15,2000 by a hardy team of renegades.It  was the first .NET site built by Microsoft and its first .NET community site.

I joined Microsoft while Gotdotnet was in its fallow period (2003). But Gotdotnet survived, and thrived, even while technically neglected. It got a new lease on life in 2005 when Sandy Khaund gave me the chance to bring it back.

We did it. Even Scott Hanselman agreed. :)

Meanwhile, Jim Newkirk and the folks worked on honing Codeplex with a triumphant launch in 2006. Codeplex took the Gotdotnet collaborative development environment one further (see Channel 9 video. )

With the advent of Codeplex, folks expected Gotdotnet to close fully in the summer of 2007. So did I. :)  But while I was fooling around with Live QnA and the Cod of Conduct, and then joined the XNA team - Gotdotnet was still needed.

Today  however, Jim IMed me cause he figured I'd want to be one of the first to know what happens when you try to go to www.gotdotnet.com now.

Jim worried that I'd be unhappy ( for various reasons, which I'll get to in later blog posts next week, I won't be able to attend Gotdotnet's goodbye party).  But actually I feel good that the Gotdotnet community of developers has found good tools and a home in Codeplex and CodeGallery - they are being looked after. You can't do any better than Jim's crew.

The thing that's funny is, (aside from the fact that all the links to photos I hosted there for my early blogging efforts are now broken :P) ----well...it's weird like a phantom limb...but I don't quite believe it's gone. That is, I know the URL doesn't resolve, but I irrationally feel in the back of my mind somehow, someway, It Will Be Back. It was so very very hard to kill. You know what I mean? Some Web sites have a life of their own, even if they are just in memory.

And also... I have another Web site on my mind, https://creators.xna.com . I hope to hear more and learn from its developer community this year. Right now, all I can do is make 2D cod games. :)

Live it vivid!