Let’s now turn to our second contestant for the evening. Can you tell us who you are?
My name is Mathias Brandewinder; I live in San Francisco, where I run Clear Lines Consulting, developing applications with a quantitative modeling bent.
Do I discern a hint of an accent?
Indeed you do – 10 years in San Francisco barely made a dent in my French accent.
What kind of developer are you?
I have dabbled with computers since forever, starting with an Amstrad CPC 6128. I began as a paid developer around 2000, writing VBA-heavy Excel models, modeling portfolio decisions for biotech companies, and began working with .NET in 2004. Since then, my languages of predilection have been C# at day, F# at night. I have done lots of projects developing .NET applications with an Excel front-end, and was recognized as a Microsoft MVP for VSTO 2 years ago. You can get a sense for what I do at my blog,
http://www.clear-lines.com/blog/
What is VSTO? Why should we care?
VSTO stands for Visual Studio Tools for Office. In a nutshell, it provides a bridge between Office and .NET, enabling the development of .NET applications with an Office front-end. With VSTO, Excel developers can leverage the full power of the .NET framework, in a modern development environment, and potentially deliver much richer solutions than what VBA allows. However, it also has pitfalls, and can be unpleasant. I will present a full add-in development with VSTO – the good and the bad – so that you can judge by yourself if it is right for you.
What do you do when you are not coding?
What do you mean, not coding? 
I also enjoy Thai Boxing, detective stories, and a good time with friends, cigars and good food.
Do you have questions for the audience?
Please use the comments to let me know if you have any requests! I was also considering touching on OpenXML, which is a great way to work directly with Office files via .NET, if there are any takers… Also, I expect you guys will be Excel rock-stars, but indication on how comfortable you are with .NET and C# is highly welcome.
– Mathias Brandewinder
January 2, 2012 at 8:02 pm |
[...] I have just posted a profile of Mathias and his talk on the conf blog. [...]
January 25, 2012 at 11:35 pm |
[...] Mathias Brandewinder spoke on VSTO, showing that version 2 was not the bugbear that version 1 had been. He demonstrated several simple applications including Ribbon and Custom Task Panes; see VSTOStocks.codeplex.com. For UDFs he recommends ExcelDNA and XLL-plus. The audience were with him right up to the point he mentioned that VSTO needs a Visual Studio 2010 Professional licence at $800. However, ask your national MS developers’ contact who may know of special offers with eg Technet. [...]