What an Amazing Five Years It Has Been!
What you hold in your hands is the five-year anniversary issue of CoDe Magazine. How significant is that? We think it is very significant, and probably more so than other five-year anniversaries. Here's why: CoDe Magazine is a small organization (a division of EPS Software Corp - www.eps-software.com - a relatively small custom software and consulting company) and we are therefore up against huge competition! And this is a tough business to be in. The vast majority of new magazines never make it beyond the first few years. That is certainly what our competitors prophesized for CoDe years ago. Competitors tried to belittle us. Advertisers wanted to wait and see "whether we'd still be around a year later." Even some authors were skeptical at first. But there was one group of people that have always stuck with us and were enthusiastic about what we were doing: The readers! And that's what always counted for us. Overall, the endeavor of a software company turning publisher has worked out much better than large publishers trying to understand software development. We believe that we are the leaders in independent content delivery for .NET developers today, and readers seem to con-firm that by rating CoDe Magazine articles an average of 4.18 stars out of a possible 5!Across the board, over all 5 years! So how did we get here? Here's a brief history of how things started out. Premier Issue Pre-Production The first issue of CoDe Magazine appeared in spring of 2000. Before that could happen, however, we had a lot of up-front work that needed to be done. So in a lot of ways, CoDe Magazine came into existence in1999. At that time, .NET had not even been announced and people were worried about the Y2K problem. People were working in COM and (many of them) in pre-COM environments. In that light, the people working at CoDe Magazine had a new idea that many doubted would work: create a language-independent magazine that would not focus on a language like VB, C++, or VFP, but on the platform and technologies instead. When talking about that idea, we often said that, "Once COM+ gets released, it will not matter what language you use to program queued components. Instead, you will focus on how queued components are developed in more general terms." Windows DNA showed that concept to be correct, and .NET drove that point home more impressively than any environment before. Spring 2000 
Our first issue focused on a revolutionary concept: "Windows DNA2000." This issue's articles discussed XML messaging, COM+ events, Web server stress testing, and other Windows DNA-related subjects.We provided CoDe samples mostly in VB6and VFP at the time. We also had an article about VFP string performance. Summer and Fall 2000 
These two issues continued many of the same concepts as Spring 2000 - Windows DNA everywhere. Our cover articles also included COM+ security and queued components. XML messaging was big in both issues. In a way, Windows DNA seems so distant now. On the other hand, developers had to tackle many of the same problems they are tackling today. Security and message-based programming were, and continue to be, hot topics (although both subjects have taken on a drastically different appearance today). | & | | 
By: Markus Egger Markus is the founder and publisher of CODE Magazine and EPS' President and Chief Software Architect. He is also a Microsoft RD (Regional Director) and the one of the longest (if not THE longest) running Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals). Markus is also a renowned speaker and author.
Markus' spends most of his time writing production code. The projects Markus has worked on include efforts for some of the world's largest companies including many Fortune 500 companies. Markus has also worked as a contractor for Microsoft (including the Visual Studio team). Markus has presented at many industry events, ranging from local user groups to major events such as MS TechEd. Markus' written work has been published extensively and in magazine ranging from MSDN Magazine, to Visual Studio Magazine, and of course in Markus' own CODE Magazine and much more. Markus is a supporter of communities in North America, Europe, and sometimes even beyond.
Markus currently focuses on development in .NET (Windows, Web, Windows Phone, and WinRT) as well as Android and iOS. He is passionate about overall application architecture, SOA, user interfaces and general development productivity and building maintainable and reusable systems.
In his spare time, Markus is an avid windsurfer, scuba diver, ice hockey player and world traveler. On a rainy day, he is known to enjoy a good game on his PC or Xbox.
megger@eps-software.com |