{"id":6193,"date":"2006-08-15T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T13:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/vcblog\/2006\/08\/15\/introducing-damien-watkins\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T18:54:44","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T18:54:44","slug":"introducing-damien-watkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/introducing-damien-watkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Damien Watkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My name is Damien Watkins<\/a> and I am one of the newest members of the Visual C++ team, having been here for just one month. To understand how I fit into the team here, I’m a program manager reporting to Steve Teixeira<\/a> and will be involved in coordinating activities between our group and the academic community. I am not new to Microsoft however, for the past three years I worked at Microsoft Research Cambridge<\/a> (you can still see me in the latest MSRC team picture<\/a> if you look hard enough.) Prior to working for Microsoft I was involved with Project 7, where a number of us “academic types” worked with the Common Language Runtime. It was here I was fortunate enough to meet people like Brad Abrams, John Gough, Jim Hogg, Ronald Laeremans (Steve’s manager on the Visual C++ team now), Erik Meijer and Jim Miller. In fact my first book<\/a> was co-authored with fellow Project 7 member Mark Hammond<\/a> and Brad Abrams<\/a> (not that it ever sold enough to warrant a second edition<\/a> – c’est la vie.) And speaking of Erik Meijer<\/a>, he recently conducted a great symposium on “Languages on .NET” (Lang.NET<\/a>) on the Microsoft campus in building 20. It is great to see all these languages targeting the CLI and to meet many friends from the old days (I even managed a “Sunday Brunch” with Clemens Szyperski<\/a>, John Gough<\/a>, and a number of John’s ex-students who now work in the Puget Sound area.)<\/p>\n

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My main area of interest in terms of software is “component architectures<\/a>”, everything from “pipes” to DCE to COM to CORBA to .NET. I freely admit in public to being a COM fan (I still have a “COM is Love T-shirt” that Don Box gave me and will wear it on special occasions although I am trying to preserve it as much as possible.)<\/p>\n

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Recently I am often asked “why did I move to the Visual C++ team”. There are a number of reasons but first to mind would be: <\/p>\n

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