ASP.NET Core 1 RC2 ?presented by Alexander Kaplin

I was given a chance to interview Alexander Kaplin who is a Microsoft partner and a senior technical consultant with 20 years of IT experience in various Microsoft technology areas.

Alexander will be giving a talk in the offices of Stamford Consultants in Zurich with the aim to educate the members of the Zurich Developers .Net User Group Zurich on ASP.NET Core 1 RC2. You can get to know a bit about Alexander’s interests and his relationship with IT by reading this little interview I conducted with him.

Thanks to these series of interviews of IT Professionals, we are trying to give insights into the life of an IT professional here in Switzerland.

How did you first become interested in IT and when did you realise this would become your profession? 

Ever since I was a teenager, I was one of those guys that had Commodore 64. It was my hobby, my passion, and my way of learning. Most of my time I enjoyed programming and soon I realized that it could be a lifelong profession.

What do you enjoy most about working as an IT professional?

I like working with people and delivering products and solutions. It’s hard to pinpoint a particular aspect because I have been doing different roles in IT delivery. However, if I have to mention one, I believe it’s the challenge of the technology and how to apply it to deliver great products and services.

What does it take to become a successful developer?

Be passionate about being a developer, focus on understanding the concepts and deliverables. Keep delivering on time with quality. Never stop learning - our work, in essence, is a knowledge profession that requires constant learning. 

What advice would you give to a young developer starting off their career today?

Don’t try to learn all programming abstractions and languages at once. Try to focus on a handful of them and try to master one at the time.

How do you choose what programming language to learn?  

For me, this is as simple as how popular the language is in my profession.

You are very much involved in the Microsoft community. Can you tell me what this entails and how you became part of it?

There are different ways of getting involved in Microsoft communities; there are forums, beta programs, and different user groups. I have been involved in early technology and tools development in Codeplex and those different user groups such as Unity, Web Service Factory, and Reactive Extensions. Today most of these are on GitHub such as .Net Core and ASP.NET Core, which I have been following up and involved since the beginning, I believe this is my personal investment in keeping ever changing technology at my hand. 

You will be presenting here at the Stamford offices on behalf of the .Net User Group. Can you tell me more about the group and what the topic of your presentation will be: 

The .Net User Group ’s a network for .Net technology professionals and its great way to keep in touch with other professionals.  I have been involved on ASP.NET Core 1 (ASP.NET 5) GitHub development since the beginning, and I will present on this session my perspective on the ASP.NET CORE 1

Microsoft are in the process of purchasing LinkedIn. As a recruiter this is very interesting to me. What do you think this will mean for the LinkedIn platform?

Both companies are delivering product and services. I believe we will have much more integrated products and services in LinkedIn while using the Microsoft products.

How do you see Microsoft will evolve in the next decade?

I believe more and more products will go further virtual or cloud based and our daily life will be more bound to it

What is your favourite piece of Microsoft technology?

At the moment, HoloLens and I believe it has great potential to change our life quite significantly in the future.  

What would you like to see them develop in the future?

Better integration and tooling of using GPU power in general programming languages like C# and F#.

Thank you Alexander for your insight.

If you are interested in career advice on how to enter the Swiss IT job market in the please get in touch. You can find more information on the website of our company The Stamford Group. 

The Stamford Group, has evolved from its origins in recruitment to a group of companies offering a full range of Talent Sourcing Solutions, to reflect the change in our Clients' needs within today's Global market. This enables our customers to choose or combine a variety of sourcing solutions and specialist services to ensure a 'Right Fit' model, a model based on flexibility and adaptability.