Have you ever read someone else’s code?  I have, but generally it wasn’t to see how well they coded it, or to learn something new, but rather to fix something broke or add a new feature.  However, since I began reading Scott Hanselman and his “The Weekly Source Code” series of posts, I have changed the way I think and operate, somewhat.  I’ve began looking at code just for the fun of it.  Yea, kind of weird.  But that’s what being in this business is all about (or so I tell myself).  If your not familiar with Scotts series, it’s about taking some time each week to purposely read someone else’s code hoping to learn something, good or bad, that will help you become a better programmer.  With the advent of Open Source projects and Google Code (is there a Bing Code?), that, has become a lot easier.

How about documentation?  Have you ever just grabbed your favorite API documentation or a stack of white papers and sat down by a cozy fire and read it from top to bottom while sipping some a latte? No? Well frankly, neither have I.  But, I constantly find myself digging into them to understand a new tool or looking through them to solve a problem. Sometimes I use them to write my code for me grabbing the “samples” and pasting them in my classes.  However, when I use them it’s usually as a result of a Google or Bing search pointing me to something deep inside of the documentation.  I’ve never really taken them from the surface and just started reading them.  Can you do that?  Is there a way to read documentation like a book?  I don’t know but, I’m willing to experiment to find out and in the process expand my knowledge and hopefully yours too.  So in the spirit of Scotts “The Weekly Source Code” series, I am going to begin a series on reviewing online documentation, specifically Microsoft's. Taking a look at the hard core .Net developers favorite source for documentation, MSDN.  MSDN is chock full of information of all varieties.  There is so much information that I believe a lot of it is overlooked by the average developer, myself included.   I intend to fix that and make myself more aware of what’s in there and, hopefully you’ll come along for the ride.

So join me next Friday as I begin this journey into the the tangled field of API’s, white papers and blog posts.

Till then, get the firewood and cappuccino machine ready.  As for me, I’m off to start mapping my trip.

Enjoy the day!