Senthil Kumar – Chances are that if you are into Windows Phone development or IT in general, you will have read an article on the Internet written by Senthil Kumar. With multiple speaking engagements and a leader in the software industry, it is clear why the Software Engineer from Bangalore is in high demand.
This is evident when you visit his blogs. I was lucky enough to be able to have caught up with him and threw a few questions his way.
Bio
Senthil Kumar is a Software Engineer and a blogger from Bangalore. He is passionate about Windows Phone and .NET technologies.
Blogs: MobileOSGeek(All about Mobile Development) and Ginktage
Twitter: @isenthil
Senthil Kumar – Speaker , Blogger , Software Engineer , Microsoft India Rockstar
1. Who is Senthil Kumar? Please tell me about your background, personal and professional.
I work for a software company based out of Bangalore. I am a post graduate in computer applications (MCA) from Christ College , Bangalore and primarily work on C# , Entity Framework , Winforms , ASP.NET MVC etc. and passionate about Windows Phone development. I started my IT Career in Nov 2008 and have had some great learning experiences for the last 4+ years working on different technologies and languages like .NET, Delphi and PHP to an extent as well.
I also participate in various User Group meets / events and have been an active member of the Bangalore .NET User Group (BDOTNET) as attendee, speaker and core member of the group.
2. Your blog http://www.ginktage.com/ has a motto of “Learn, Blog, and Share”. I have to say that you live that motto to the fullest. How do you manage your blog? Where does the inspiration come from for your articles?
Thanks for the feedback 🙂 . Well, the inspiration for my blog has been my day to day experiences. I try to share things that I experience in my day to day life. For example, this could be my learning of an concept , code snippet which I tried , events that I attend , gadgets that I use and review etc.
Apart from this , my friends have been a great inspiration to me .There were few mistakes done by me during my initial times when blogging but I learnt from them through my friends and community members and have been trying to improve every day.
3. What does your workspace look like?
My workspace has my desktop, HTC Windows Phone 8X, headset and lots of books to read.
4. How do you stay up to date with the latest trends in IT and programming?
Well, One can get up to date with the technologies only by reading a lot or listening to others explaining about it. I keep myself updated by reading lots of books, blogs etc. Facebook and twitter has been one of my valuable social networking sites for keeping updated on things happening in IT.
5. If you had to choose to work on only one technology to work with for the rest of your career, what would it be and why?
That would be an easy question to answer. It would definitely be .NET and especially C# and Entity Framework. .NET has been one of my favourite technology right from my college days. Because of the ease of learning, some good features in C# and using the same for developing apps for Windows Phone , Windows 8 , Winforms , ASP.NET etc. makes it one of the candidate to choose the language.
6. You recently shared a blog post on Podcasts of interest to .NET Devs. What do you use to subscribe to Podcasts and which are a few of your favorites?
I use the RSS Feeds to subscribe and keep updated on the podcast. I do have few apps installed on my Windows Phone to catch up with the podcasts.
My favorite ones are .NET rocks and Hansel minutes.
7. What project are you currently working on?
Currently, I am working on a project that involves ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, C#, SQL Server and Windows Azure.
Apart from this, personally I am also doing some stuff related to Windows Phone development.
8. Every developer has something they Love doing, and also something they absolutely hate doing. What is yours? (For example, I absolutely hate writing user manuals.)
I love all and hate none …that was more of a diplomatic answer isn’t it? 🙂
Well, I love to code a lot especially on Microsoft technologies, read more books (technical) and attend more community events and network with peers. I also love to tell lot of poor jokes to my peers and few of my colleagues including my managers call me “PJ King” 😉
I hate to be idle or inactive and hence I try to do some or the other things that keep me busy in my career.
9. What development tools do you use in your everyday programming? (IDE’s, 3rd party controls such as Telerik etc.)
I primarily use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 at work along with DevExpress Code Rush, ASP.NET and Winforms controls.
At home, I use Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2013 RC, Telerik RAD Controls for Windows Phone, Windows Phone toolkit. Of late, I have been trying out Oxygene from RemObjects and planning to try out XAMARIN in the near future for learning.
10. Have you been using Visual Studio 2013 Preview for a while now?
Yes, I have been using it for some time now.
11. When faced with a particular programming problem, to whom or what do you reach out for help?
Google.com and bing.com ;). This has been the first preference for not just me but most of the developers. There are chances that a similar problem could have been solved by someone else and the search engine definitely helps to identify few (if available). Apart from this, there are few community members who are reachable for solutions as well.
12. What would your advice be to new programmers?
Read a lot, learn the basic concepts/foundation very well and share it to the peers (if possible). That’s it
13. Do you think that having a blog is beneficial to programmers? If so, why?
It definitely helps not just for the person who is writing the blog but also for the people reading the blog. The blog lets you share your experiences, problems that you solved with code snippets etc. and there are high chances it might help the person reading your blog might benefit if he is from the background.
14. What do you enjoy doing outside of IT?
I started learning photography. I am a big fan of a Tamil actor “Vijay” and don’t miss out any opportunity to watch his movies even if it is telecasted on TV 🙂
15. What was the last book you read?
The last book I read was Code Complete by McConnell and currently reading C# 5.0 in a nutshell by Joseph Albabari and Ben Albabari
16. Android, iOS or Windows Phone?
I am Windows guy 😉 and trust me I have been using Windows Phone right from the Windows Mobile 5 days …
I definitely prefer Windows Phone but will try out android soon (if possible) 🙂
17. Have you developed an application for an AppStore (iOS, Windows etc.)? If so, would you care to tell us a bit about it?
I have developed few apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8. Some of them includes Home Loan EMI Calculator for Windows Phone, Number Converter for Windows Phone. MobileOSGeek Feeds app, WTools for Windows 8 etc. I am also planning to add more quality apps to my kit in the near future 🙂
