I started working in the IT industry at the early stages of the "DOT COM" boom and from the very start I was exposed to various Microsoft "DOT COM" products. These products included Visual Studio 6, ASP, COM, IIS, Transaction Server, Site Server 3.0 (Commerce Edition - very important) and SQL Server 6.5. Initially I started off automating Microsoft Office by "writing" simple programs in VBA, by recording macros and figuring out the rest.
From there I moved into writing “as dynamic as possible” ASP applications using SQL Server as a configuration store. I then joined a Microsoft Solution provider and was taught the finer art of writing object orientated COM components with VB6, which initially replaced the include files in the ASP application and later evolved into the business and data layers which could be reused by other application.
At the same time I constantly researched and explored the various maturing Microsoft products, e.g. SQL Server, Commerce Server, BizTalk Server, Sharepoint Portal Server and Content Management Server – coincidentally the last four products seems to have their origins from the various technologies of the massive Site Server. I also tried to keep my finger on the new developments in Microsoft and what started as ASP+, developed into the full blown .NET we know today.
Today I have worked with (and at least explored) most of the above products and more. At the same time I have moved from faithful VB6 to powerful fully object orientated C#.