{"id":3573,"date":"2008-11-11T11:00:03","date_gmt":"2008-11-11T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/2008\/11\/11\/community-interview-with-doug-rothaus-beth-massi\/"},"modified":"2024-07-05T14:03:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T21:03:42","slug":"community-interview-with-doug-rothaus-beth-massi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/community-interview-with-doug-rothaus-beth-massi\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Interview with Doug Rothaus (Beth Massi)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past month we’ve been posting interviews with the team<\/a> from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole<\/a>. This time we have Doug Rothaus, a writer on the documentation side. Doug has blogged up an XML cookbook<\/a> here on the team blog with a bunch of “recipes” on how to use different features of XML Literals and LINQ to XML in Visual Basic. <\/p>\n

Check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures<\/a> and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center<\/a> for a link to all these interviews<\/a> as well. <\/p>\n

Here’s the interview with Doug: <\/p>\n

1. Nice to meet you Doug! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from? <\/p>\n

I live in Woodinville, in Washington State. It’s about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the main Microsoft campus in Redmond. I grew up in Washington, so it’s nice to work so close to home. <\/p>\n

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team? <\/p>\n

My official title is “Programmer\/Writer”. I write reference, samples, and so on that you read in the product documentation. I feel very strongly about getting useful documentation out to the community and customers. If we don’t document it, how are you going to use it? <\/p>\n

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and\/or the IDE? <\/p>\n

Being a “data guy” from way back, I love LINQ. To be more specific, though, I love the XML Literals and XML Axis properties that come with VB and LINQ to XML. Most of the source data that I work with is stored in XML and XML literals make my life much easier. <\/p>\n

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team? <\/p>\n

I have worked for Microsoft for almost eleven years. I started in Developer Support answering questions and troubleshooting problems over the phone, by e-mail, and in chat sessions for customers working with ASP, ADO, and Visual Interdev. For the last seven years I have been writing documentation and samples for ADO.NET, ASP.NET\/Visual Web Developer, and for the last (almost) two years, Visual Basic and Visual Studio. <\/p>\n

Before Microsoft, I worked as an application developer, security analyst, and instructor for a large aerospace company in the Northwest US that you may have heard of. <\/p>\n

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language? <\/p>\n

I love that VB serves all developers well from the novice to the expert. I think one reason for this is the way VB is descriptive in much of the language. For example, “NotInheritable” is more descriptive than “sealed”. <\/p>\n

6. Have you ever been to Italy? <\/p>\n

I did take a trip to Italy (and other European countries) when I was seventeen years old. I visited Florence, Venice, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, and Sorrento. I loved Sorrento. Someday I plan on visiting there again. Of course, everywhere I went in Italy the food was delicious. (My friends tell me I describe every place I’ve been to in terms of food) <\/p>\n

7. Would you like to tell us something about your life outside the office (how do you like to spend your free time, what do you like to do when\/if you go out in the evening or when you’re at home and so on)? <\/p>\n

Most of my time is spent with my wife and three children. I also play\/sing quite a bit of music in my free time. I have a small home studio and a collection of instruments (2 electric basses, four guitars, one mandolin, one keyboard\/workstation, congas\/percussion). My other hobby is motorcycles. I ride them and race them at the track. I’m a MotoGP and World Superbike fan as well. Have they heard of Valentino Rossi in Italy? \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n

8. Who is your favorite musician? <\/p>\n

I have to pick one? Out of a very long list, I will submit Mark King (of Level 42). Awesome bass player—and he flawlessly sings lines counter to what he’s playing. <\/p>\n

9. What’s your favorite food? <\/p>\n

Pizza. It contains all of the four necessary food groups! <\/p>\n

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past month we’ve been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Doug Rothaus, a writer on the documentation side. Doug has blogged up an XML cookbook here on the team blog with a bunch of “recipes” on how to use different features of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":8818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,195],"tags":[40,59,75],"class_list":["post-3573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-team-member-interviews","category-visual-basic","tag-beth-massi","tag-doug-rothaus","tag-interview"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

This past month we’ve been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Doug Rothaus, a writer on the documentation side. Doug has blogged up an XML cookbook here on the team blog with a bunch of “recipes” on how to use different features of […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/vbteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}