A new fabulous adventure

Tomorrow, the 30th of November, 2012, is the first day of my fifth decade here on Earth, and my last day at Microsoft. (*)

I've been working at Microsoft full-time since 1996 and had two years of internships before that. Microsoft is an awesome company. We do great work here: work that changes the way people interact with information in a fundamental way. And I in particular, have had the pleasure and the privilege to work on technologies that change how developers like me get their jobs done. There is no place doing better work on the design and implementation of real-world, production-strength programming languages that ship to millions of developers.

A number of those developers read this very blog, which I've been writing for nine years now. Sharing my fabulous adventures in coding with you all has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this job. I mean to continue writing it, but unfortunately, Microsoft's (entirely sensible) policy is that only full time employees get to post to MSDN blogs. I am therefore, effective right now, moving my blog to ericlippert.com. Please subscribe to the RSS feed, which is at https://ericlippert.com/feed/.  (**)

I also intend to finally start "tweeting" occasionally; if you haven't already, please follow me on Twitter where I am @ericlippert.

A number of people have asked me what motivated this decision. Of course any life decision of this magnitude has a lot of reasons behind it, but the biggest one is simply: I've been here for 40% of my entire life, I've been feeling for some time that it would be good to take on a new challenge, and an opportunity has arisen that is tailor-made to my skills and interests. I'll describe that new opportunity in the first post on my new blog. As you'll see, I am very pleased that it will still involve supporting the C# development community, just in a different way.

Were I to try to make a list of current and erstwhile coworkers to thank it would be extremely long and I would undoubtedly embarrass myself by omitting someone. I've had the opportunity to learn about programming languages and developer tools from literally hundreds of developers, testers, writers, editors, program managers, managers, mentors, architects, distinguished engineers and at least a couple of technical fellows. (***) Thank you all; I hope to continue to work with you in the future.

And thanks to you all, who have been reading this blog these past nine years. Your comments, praise and always constructive criticism have helped me learn what customers need and helped everyone here shape C# into the amazing tool it is today. I hope we can continue sharing this adventure; see you at ericlippert.com.

Eric Lippert

UPDATE: Holy goodness, the outpouring here, on the new blog, on reddit, hacker news and twitter of both well-wishing and FUD is delightful for the former and distressing for the latter.

Regarding the former: thank you all for your kind thoughts; I appreciate it very much.

To dispel some of the rumours that are floating around regarding the latter: 

(1) C#, Roslyn and .NET in general are doing fine; rumours of their deaths are greatly exaggerated. I certainly would not go to work on yet another C# static analyzer if I did not think there was a bright future to all of them, and to the Microsoft ecosystem in general. The C# language is in good hands; Anders and Mads are still deeply engaged in that process, and I am just one (albeit highly visible) member of a kick-ass team of dozens of people who are building Roslyn. I am leaving it in excellent hands and in excellent shape. 

(2) As I said, this was a personal decision based on many factors; the main factor was a desire to pursue a new set of challenges that use my existing skill set. I certainly was not fired, and I look forward to having a close working relationship with the C# team in the future.

And finally:

(3) The first day of my first decade was the day I was born. So tomorrow being the first day of my fifth decade makes me 40, not 50.

Thank you again for your kind thoughts.

Eric


(*) That timing is not coincidental.

(**) Since I will no longer have the ability to reply to comments, they are shut off as of now. If you have comments, please leave them on the new blog. Thanks!

(***) The most hilarious job title at Microsoft as far as I'm concerned.