It seems to me lately that I am continually writing, essentially, the same program for every problem. The language has changed from VB6 to VB.NET to C#, but the pattern behind the design is the same. It's always a Winform front end, common logic/objects in a middle dll, and data access from another dll that usually hits stored procedures on a SQL Server. Not that it's a bad design, because it's not. But I'm just afraid that I'm not growing as a developer. I even use the same old design of a common starting point that calls a logical UI object that controls the flow to the user and back down to the database. I guess it's considered a data centric design for n-tier architecture.
The point is that I need more depth and breadth in my solutions. Sure I can be an expert in this one area, but how often is another area a better solution to the problem. What do I do when a client-server WinForm isn't the answer? I should have a better understanding of the WebForm/Web application world and the design patterns they use. The funny part is, I've had jobs where I've written to mobile devices and done middle/backend work on web apps; I've even done Javascript on an ASP.NET app. I was doing my part in those development shops; Providing the needed code to get the job done. I just never felt completely comfortable with anything but WinForms. At least to the point where I would tackle one by myself.
So here's a goal for myself: Explore more solutions than just WinForms. My previous post on free iPhone development training should be a good starting point for completely thinking outside of the WinForm world. I would ideally like to learn more about ASP.NET web apps and Silverlight. Certainly the MVC design pattern deserves quite a bit of attention. But I should also explore the new kid on the block in WinForms, WPF. Anyway, it should be a fun journey and I'll surely have grown in the process. I'll try to blog about what I'm doing to achieve this new goal.
~Adam