Steve Ernst on serialization to XML

You my have heard about how everyone at Microsoft has an office. Well... that is true of Redmond, but in Fargo they have chosen to bring us closer together, to foster a tight knit community spirit, and to create the kind of team environment that only a cube farm can create :).

I had never worked in a cube farm before and it has been a fun experience. It creates some separation and privacy, while keeping you close enough together so that you can absorb information (I prefer the term osmotic communication over eavesdropping ;) ) from the conversations between your teammates next door.

The cubes in Fargo are organised into streets, with about ten people to a street. I live in a cube next to Steve Ernst (with Todd Lefor on his other side). Steve is a developer on the same team as me, the MBF Application Framework team. I have learnt more about MBF from Steve than from any other single source.

Steve just started blogging (and already my friend Will Luu from Melbourne has found him!), and his first post is a good one. Have you ever thought of combining idea behind the C++ union operator with XML? My first thoguht was that it might break XML's hierarchical (i.e. single parented) nature, but Steve isn't afraid to push the boundaries... read Steve's thoughts on the serialization of objects to XML.

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