Johannesburg, 09 Sep 2003
A revamped Microsoft developer community, sadeveloper.net, has grown from 120 users to 779 since its inception in June.
Kaylash Bhana, product manager of developer tools at Microsoft SA, says the local developer community is "driven by Microsoft developers for developers". On 1 June, the 120 users from a previous Microsoft user group, MDUG, were voluntarily migrated to the new site. MDUG is no longer operational.
Simon Stewart, former chairman of MDUG and an independent developer on the Microsoft platform, runs the new site. He says the main difference between the two sites lies in the support it gets from Microsoft. Stewart adds that sites like this can experience tremendous growth, as is evident in the one million users of www.thecodeproject.com, a Microsoft Developer Network-partnered community.
"But the fact that this one is local adds to the value it brings to SA developers," he says.
Getting known
Bhana says the site aims to provide Microsoft developers with a community in which they can get to know one another and raise their profile on the basis of their achievements. It features code snippets, forums and conversation strings, training (eg MSDN Essential sessions), migration advice (eg Visual Basic 6 to VB.Net 2003), articles on anything from architecture to databases and more.
"In some cases, user group meetings can happen in the flesh," he adds.
The site contains a privacy statement that ensures Microsoft does not know the identity or contact details of members.
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