'Meet an ADC', Stuart Leeks

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 It's been a while since our last 'Meet an ADC' post, but we kick things off again with Stuart Leeks.

 

  1. Hello, who are you?

I’m Stuart Leeks and am a geek technologist with a salsa dancing addiction. I’m married and have a 6 month old son who is great but has restricted my salsa dancing (and sleep for that matter).

  1. Have you always worked in the ADC Team?

Nope, prior to joining the ADC Team I worked as a developer/architect with a number of ISVs on a range of technologies. I’ve spent the last eight years working mostly with .Net and have worked with various areas of this ever expanding technology set: Remoting (in the heady days before WCF),WinForms, Threading, System.Data, ASP.Net Web Forms, System.Drawing, Interop: COM Interop, P/Invoke and mixed mode C++ (remember the original managed extensions for C++? __gc anyone?)

  1. What sort of technologies do you use as an ADC?

 .Net (C#, LINQ, WCF, ...), SQL Server, ...

  1. What do you enjoy about working at Microsoft?

The knowledge and passion of my colleagues. It really keeps you on your toes, but is a great way to learn.

  1. How do you keep skills up to date with the latest technologies?

Blogs, MSDN Magazine, getting my hands dirty and playing with the new technologies, talking to colleagues, team meetings

  1. What software do you use as part of your role?

Visual Studio 2008, Outlook, Reflector, SQL Server Management Studio 2008, OneNote (an underrated tool IMHO), SysInternals utilities, Internet Explorer, Excel, Word, Command Prompt (I keep promising to make the switch to PowerShell...)

  1. How would you describe a typical day as an ADC?

Did you say typical? Really? Working with a customer around a technology they’re using or interested in, running a performance/scalability lab, preparing a presentation, catching up on email, delivering a presentation, keeping up-to-date with technologies, putting together proof-of-concept code for a customer, ...

  1. What’s your technology of the moment?

I’m enjoying exploring LINQ – the underlying concepts of LINQ as much as any particular flavour (LINQ To Objects/XML/SQL/Entities), especially lambdas and expression trees.