Editor's Note
Thanks for the Memories!
Stephen Toub
Writing an editor’s note is not an easy task. Based on my extensive research into many development magazines, I’ve found that to do it correctly you need to start by writing about a topic completely unrelated to anything development-focused. You then wax poetic about the weather, political affairs, or the latest fad in high-tech gadgetry. And you need to come up with a few minimally thought-out recommendations for strategies that will solve all of the world’s problems. To make it a truly outstanding editor’s note, however, you also need to invent a new word for something that already has several well-known names, "proclamize" your publication as the best thing since sliced bread, include several acronyms without definition, and throw in a few trite lines of code (which, ideally, will have a few lurking bugs).
When I set out to write this page, I intended to do none of this, but the pattern is difficult to avoid, IMHO. This being my first editor’s note, and most likely my last, I feel no compulsion to continue the pattern with the non sequitur that is supposed to follow—inevitably an attempt at using misdirection to convince the reader that everything discussed up to this point is crucial to her ability to implement the next big software application, or to even comprehend the pages that follow. Instead, I plan to use the remaining words allotted to me to say thank you.
I’ve had a thrilling ride at MSDN Magazine. I’ve been privileged to work on close to 50 issues, providing technical reviews for over 700 cutting-edge articles and writing more than 40, including the .NET Matters column. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at conferences on behalf of Microsoft and MSDN, and I’ve worked hard to facilitate MSDN Magazine’s rise in prominence to where we are today—serving more than a million developers every month. Truly it’s been a wonderful experience, and an honor, to be able to bring to you each month the best information we can find, from some of the brightest minds in the industry, to aid and entertain you.
After almost four years, though, I’m looking forward to my next big challenge. My interests have always been aligned with those of software developers and researchers, and I’m excited to get back to my roots. Working at Microsoft affords so many great opportunities, and I’ve chosen to apply myself in the Developer Division, where I’ll be working with the Parallel Computing Platform team to help make the "many-core" era of software development a reality.
So, thank you, all of you, for everything. Thank you for being loyal readers. Thank you for all of your questions, suggestions, comments, criticisms, and praise. Thank you to those who have written articles for the magazine, to our wonderful columnists (with whom the opportunity to work was one of the primary reasons I took this job), and to everyone from Microsoft who has graciously proffered their time and resources to make the magazine the success it is. Most importantly, thank you to the entire magazine team at Microsoft for being such a dedicated and passionate group of folks! It’s been my pleasure working with you every day, and I look forward to continuing to work with you when time allows for the occasional future installment of .NET Matters.
We’re all part of something amazing, and I can’t wait to see the progress we in the software industry experience in the next 5 years, in the next 10 years, and beyond. I know that MSDN Magazine will be there helping us out each step of the way.
With that, there’s only one thing left to do:
public static void UntilNextTime() {
System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit();
System.Environment.Exit(0);
System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().Kill();
System.Environment.FailFast(“Thanks for the memories!”);
}
—Stephen Toub