So there I am doing what a geek does best – sitting in Cafe Nero on Tottenham Court Road in the centre of London on a Saturday afternoon, killing timewhile waiting to meet up with my daughter, and doing a little coding to pass the time when someone (his name turned out to be Jim) asks me “so what do you think of the Visual Studio 2010 beta?”

Me> It’s OK; its stable and functional, and the UI performs quite well, which is good because it uses WPF.

Jim> Yes I know, I’m working on it.

Me> (slightly confused, and thinking he means he is working with WPF) Oh, that’s interesting. So what kind of code do you write?

Jim> I’m working on Visual Studio.

Me> Yes, I realise, but what are you using WPF for?

Jim> No, I mean I work for Microsoft. I’m in the Visual Studio team over in Redmond. I work on Visual Studio. Always good to get feedback!

Beats an MSDN survey any day of the week!