It's a journey to even begin to learn what it takes to become a real professional software developer.

From the first day when I get to use the computer, starting to get fascinated with the things to do and another world opened to me, I think that it must be cool to do this for life.u

Same as anything you do, when you think you are good, you just want to get better.

During the high school days, I'm basically just learning random things about programming, some tips and cool snippets to use in web pages using CGI scripts.

I will even learn some interesting hacks around lots of problems and things, and I thought I'm getting good at computers some how.

I remember there was a thread started to tell lots of developers to recall how they got started into developing.

For me, I started when I was around 10 years old, I was fascinated with my cousin how he can program video games on his DOS machine, and he shows me the various stuff he has done and he can answer every computer question I have. I guess that inspiration to become like him urged me to pick up that QBasic book from the book store.

Although I didn't get far with it, just simple programs that display text and even play a song using the intergrated board MIDI player, it does show me a way to be even more creative with computers rather than just executing exe files.

After I come to America and being a junior at High school, I was part of the computer club in school. That's when I started to learn what does people mean when they talk about "geeks", "nerds".

It seems like a dis-associating and anti-social people that take pride in their knowledge of knowing how to solve or hack around many things in computer. Other words, the cooler program or hacks you know, you're something big.

That isn't what I'm looking for.

When it comes to University, that's when a new world opens to me when I seriously starting to learn more about programming, OOP, classes and methods and so forth. However, the image of being a great programmer is what I see in computer science classes, that seems to be someone that can solve really technical problems, react so quickly to puzzles and can give out solutions like in seconds. I'm amazed how they can be so smart. To me that's like professionalism that time.

I wasn't the person that can produce the coolest demo in the programming class, or the person that everyone knows is the biggest geek. So I wanted to be that kind of person when I was just freshmen or sophomore in college.

Now after becoming a SDE at Microsoft, that concept of being a professional developer has become to change. Actually, it already started to change when I was intern at Washington Mutual.

There are people that seems to know all the answers, know all the solutions, smart and good at programming, but are so hard to work with. They cannot stand what other people are doing,

I become to start learning that to be a professional software developer doesn't merely mean that you are just technical superb.

There are other developers that think they've known it all, pretty good at coming up with solutions, know how to do the new tricks and whistles in programming, but do not understand the foundation and underlying reason what development is for.

I started to ask myself, and even mf y manager started me on this journey of thinking that, what it is to become not just a software developer, but a real professional developer?

In other words, I believe that merely being able to join a corporation or be part of company automatically transforms you into a professional develoepr as it is your profession.

I believe you have to understand what it takes, what is it like to become one, and to withstand the test and time to be one.

It is same as any profession in this world, but I believe there are many young kids that want to do programming as their job doesn't understand that a developer is way more than just writing code.

As I start to jog down some thoughts in the next few posts (I'm not planning any posts now, just some random ideas I think I can spit later),

What do you think is a professional software developer should be like?

Although I'm already almost a month past NEO, I do hope I have wrote down what I have learned and thought about the whole orientation.

I was an intern at Microsoft during 2007 in the IT Op EAS (they've changed names like x^x times already..) managing all the B2B transactions, and help develop tools for the operation support team.

I remember during last year, the NEO was pretty interesting, but not the type of meeting that I think that I have to pay full attention at all times, because talking about company values, best representitive just doesn't ring too much for me that time. And the orientation only lasted for half of day including taking pictures.

However, this time back as an FTE, I remember when I saw that the orientation is going to take three full days I was shocked.

And when I arrived at the conference room I was even shocked, with almost 70-80 new employees onboarding the same time!

It feels more like an College orientation with so many people around you coming in fresh.

I remember the first day we write all our forms, and sit down at the conference room, I started to talk to people around me that are joining SQL, Visual Studio, Outlook, XNA, Zune, etc, It does feel amazing that you are around a diverse team of people together. It kinda burns your geek passion fire when there are so many geek power all together I guess? (joke)

To remember in short of what is in the NEO, we first get to know the main company values, the company vision and how the vision has evolved from just simply puting a computer in every room, to help reaching people's potential. To me it is quite interesting to think how us employees main goal is to actually helping others to reach their full potentials. The type of power and actually really understanding the people and how to reach that potential is going to be a huge challenge.

There is one interesting talk after the company values, that talks about the company's image. The host tells us to summarize what type of image we actually have that we heard from people. Well, for me personally, even people from UW which is closest campus from Microsoft refer them as the Evil empire, M$, copycat and bully.

On the slide where the host summarized, it actually put the real facts that people have mentioned, and ask us what was the cause and how we can bring a change into that image. I really like how we are sort of honest and sharing about the images that we precieve and see how we as representitives should live out the core values of the company. I think it's good enough for everyone that are new to each other for the first time.

When the host talks about benefits, I thought I would pay a lot of attention on it, but ended up falling asleep as it's almost just reading the paper they gave you in the package.

However, the most interesting talk, suprisingly is when the LCA team comes. The topics aren't that interesting, talking about Privacy, Law concerns in Microsoft. But the presenter really made the topics interesting, and shared some stupid mistakes microsofties made before. It was quite fun.

Overall, there are just too much to learn about the company it's just too hard to learn it even in three days. But what I enjoy the most of NEO is how you get to meet people all over, and although we going to have hard time to see each other since we're in different teams, I still contact people I meet in NEO and chat with their findings and thoughts about microsoft and the team. It's always good to network and get to have people to share things they've learned in different teams, because in Microsoft every team has their own standards, policy, culture and ways they do their job.

I cannot recall more of the NEO, but if I do remember any cool stuff I will come back and post them.

Grand opening for my new blog!

I've just started at Microsoft last month, and right now residing in the Tools Automation group as an SDE.

Hopfully I can have time to put down all the exciting new things or thoughts I have during the time I just joined this big family!