Introductory blog post . . . here goes . . . I’m Grant Killian and I used to blog a lot back in the olden days when .Net was new and there was not much documentation or true consensus on web development and the Microsoft platform. 16 years ago C# was new, we could barely spell JIT, and the question “Java or Microsoft” was something we all legitimately lost sleep over. No Microsoft web developers knew what a virtual method was, much less a virtual machine. Azure was the name some Crayola marketer came up with to sell a different shade of blue, not a hosting environment nirvana where they serve chocolate milk at every meal and you setup production environments in minutes.
I was a computer nerd working as a programmer with Microsoft and Java technologies. The day the .Net platform became generally available, I started writing production code with it and for a good year prior to that I had teammates working on beta versions of the new Microsoft technology; this was one of those showcase projects where Microsoft swoops in at the last minute to make it look all shiny and perfect before it was used as a developer conference demo and case study.
I remember the project using PocketPC and IIS in cutting edge fashion, and I also recall the project never actually seeing real use in production because of changing scope and corporate restructuring.
In about 2002, I started a .Net user group in Virginia with the clever name and URL WeProgram.Net (it’s now some Chinese ecommerce site — I should’ve kept the domain!). That user group was a great vehicle for obtaining technical books from publishers who would give them to us to promote their label, and man were we reading a lot of technical books in those days. There was tons of collaboration through blogs, newsgroups, and conferences . . . there was so much to learn and so little documentation.
Fast forward to now, and software development has evolved and considerably matured. I’ve shifted employers and projects a few significant times, including an awesome 4 year stint in Switzerland with a tiny little bank and towering snow-capped mountains. All along, I’ve worked on web technology projects, but I left the blogging world about a decade ago (while my friends at CodeBetter.com are still going strong, amazingly!).
Life can be circular. I side with Toynbee. So here we go again.
I’m now employed at Rackspace; I previously worked at Sitecore for a couple years on their professional services team. I now assist Sitecore customers at Rackspace, helping them make the most of the platform. It’s always something new, and challenging, and usually fun in a nerdy way
Like with the early days of the .Net framework, development for Sitecore involves a fluid ecosystem where smart people innovate and share their ideas with the community. There are libraries and customizations of all shapes and sizes.
Sitecore is like a new planet just discovered, with various colonies of hippie Marxists (the MVC/Glass cognoscenti?), back-to-the-land minimalists (the Sitecore scalability/perf purists?), and religious zealots (the Sitecore Analytics true-believers?). Technologists are doing very interesting and creative things with Sitecore.
This blog will be where I catalog observations and experiences while working on these assorted Sitecore projects. A field log. Hopefully, others can learn through my scribblings. I learn a lot from the online Sitecore community, so quid pro quo right? I can’t promise to contribute with great regularity, but I’ll share notes on this blog based on my experiences as time permits.
Sitecore Architecture 