system.data.objects dev guy becomes a compiler padawan

More than 5 years ago I joined what became the Entity Framework team and started an awesome adventure which taught me a lot and has given me many memories which I will treasure: Everything from a room of MVPs yelling at me (so much that one of them later apologized on his blog) and a certain well-publicized “vote” … to the v2^2 t-shirts and talk about magic unicorns, and that’s just the public stuff.  I won’t mention the crazy antics that went on behind closed doors just like pretty much any other hard-driving software team, or the experience of being part of a high-profile, at times controversial project in the world’s largest software company.  It wasn’t all fun and games, but it has been great, and I’ve had the honor of working with an outstanding group of people both inside and outside Microsoft.

One of the best parts about working at Microsoft is the opportunity it gives you to explore a variety of things and work on multiple different projects without the impact on the rest of your life associated with changing companies.  So I’ve decided the time has come for me to take advantage of this unique employment situation and explore some new challenges elsewhere in the company.  Thankfully, I know that I’m leaving the EF in very good hands and that it has a wonderfully bright future ahead of it.

In case you are wondering where I’m going, I’m joining an incubation team which is in charge of, among other things, the phoenix project.  Specifically I’ll be working on ahead-of-time compilation for c# in order to solve some really challenging problems in system programming.  One of the things that has come out of the last several years for me is a real love of programming in c#, and this project has the potential to help extend the use of c# into domains where it can’t be used today.  The team I’m joining faces some challenges which will benefit from my past experience, and at the same time there is a vast new domain to learn about where I have no experience (compilers).

So today I lay down my claim to the title “system.data.objects dev guy”, and take up the mantle of “compiler padawan.”  (My wife asks if I’m going to grow a small padawan braid at the back of my head, but I really don’t think anyone wants to see that, so I suppose I’ll pass.)

- Danny