In this edition: a story about how being forced to perform in middle school saved my demo. Plus: SQL Sequence numbers; VS 2022 formatting on save; multi-tenant applications; and CQRS/ES.
On Preparation and Show Choir
I found out that the president of the company would be attending my demo about 24 hours before I was supposed to give it. No prior warning, no "hey we might invite this really important VIP", nothing. I, as is expected of a professional, promptly spent that time freaking out, running as many scenarios as I could think of, running them again to make sure they worked the second time. Then, with only an hour to go before the demo, as I was in the midst of my terror and apprehension, I was struck by a strange memory.
I remembered my time in my middle school show choir.
My team and I recently completed a major internal project for our employer, one that has the potential to fundamentally change part of how we do business. (Because this is an internal project, I cannot really say much about it, so I have to be careful with my words.) Suffice to say that the project enables our company to be much more efficient at how we help our customers.
Since I'm the team lead, it's generally my responsibility to demo new features to our business units. Normally this isn't a big deal: block off an hour, walk them through the feature, deal with the inevitable "can it just do this little thing?" kind of requests, and get it deployed. But this particular demo, once they invited the big boss, came with quite a bit more pressure.
Pressure that reminded me of middle school show choir.
Show Choir
My parents are both musical people. They both have degrees in music, and my dad actually has a doctorate. (Yes, that's right, my dad is Dr. Jones. Cue Indiana Jones jokes.) Due to their background, they felt it was necessary for their son to join some kind of performance group, and when I entered seventh grade they made it a mandatory thing. At the time I thought it was simply because I needed more music in my life, and I could not have been more wrong.
Since I lacked any kind of desire to play an instrument, at seventh-grade orientation I chose to join a choir. But not just any choir, oh no; show choir. You know, the kind of choir that performs Broadway standards and three-decade-old pop songs at retirement homes and community centers? With jazz hands and off-pitch solos and everything?
Yup, that was me.
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