It's Wednesday!

And I am just now writing my blog post. I keep delaying these…I feel like it is better if I just post at least once a week and not try to limit myself to just the weekend. Anyway Microsoft’s BUILD conference started today and they had a couple announcements. I’ll get back to them later. First, I’m pretty terrified I’ll never be a good enough coder to code in the “real world”.

Yeah I can make for loops and if statements and I can code in a couple different languages and I am continually learning stuff on how to code better but it kind of seems futile. There are a lot of people who are continuously pushing the bounds of technology and playing catch up looks like a daunting task. Programming is all about taking a problem, no matter how simple or complex, breaking it down, and then implementing it in code. That is what I love about programming. I just don’t know how good I am at that compared to the next guy.

So back to Microsoft news. Windows Phone 8.1 and Cortana is something I’m really excited about. Hopefully they push it out to devs sometime soon so I can play around with the new changes (and maybe consider releasing Twixel on both WP8 and W8 at the same time). Also there are a couple Windows 8.1 changes they showed off. The next major update is coming April 8th but most of the changes I don’t really care for. They want to make Windows 8 easier for keyboard and mouse users to use. Before I explain my opinion I have to disclaimer that I am a Microsoft fanboy basically (even though I don’t like to label myself as one).

I’ve used Windows 8 since the first preview came out. I really like the two UI experiences in one OS. I can see why Microsoft chose to do this as they needed to compete with iOS and Android. They needed an OS for the tablet form factor. Instead of making a completely new OS they modified Windows to work with a smaller form factor. This was a bold move by them and clearly they still need to work out some of the issues but I think the true power is in the fact that a multitude of devices can now run the same experience. Windows will not change for you if you are running it on a tablet (unless you are running WinRT shudder) or running it on a computer with a 40 inch display. All the arguments I see against using Windows 8 seem to boil down to “I hate Metro”. I can understand the want to stick to Windows 7. I can also say that Windows 8 is basically the same as Windows 7. Yeah there are user interaction changes but after you get used to them (the reason why people don’t like Windows 8) I like them better. I can have my Twitch app open on one side, the Facebook app open on another side, and have code in the middle. It is even better with two monitors (I need to get another one D:). Next weekend is PAX so tons of stuff about that and hopefully the dev preview of WP8.1 will be out so yay things.