Stan Schultes – Sarasota, Florida, USA
Most Valuable Professional – Visual Basic

Stan Schultes works as a developer/architect for Sun Hydraulics Corporation, a mid-sized manufacturing company in Sarasota. Sarasota is a bit of paradise on the southwest Florida coast, near Tampa. At Sun Hydraulics, Stan creates engineering design automation tools that their engineers use to design custom-manufactured products. He founded and runs the Sarasota .NET Developers Group and is very active in the Florida developer community, speaking regularly at Florida CodeCamps and developer groups around the State. Stan has created and delivered several in-depth courses for the developer community and has recorded more than a dozen MSDN webcasts on topics such as DotNetNuke and the Software Factories from Microsoft Patterns & Practices. He has also spoken at Microsoft Visual Studio launch events and DevDays. Stan is a former columnist and contributing editor at Visual Studio Magazine (and its predecessor Visual Basic Programmers Journal) where he wrote the “Getting Started” column for nearly six years. His most recent article, Language Enhancements in Visual Basic 2005, appeared in MSDN Online. You can learn more about Stan and find links to his articles at his website, where he might eventually write a public blog.

What does being an MVP mean to you?

To me, being an MVP is all about evangelizing Microsoft developer technologies, and while in the process helping others, also learning how to be a better developer – by mentoring, teaching, or just gently nudging them. I am honored to be a Microsoft MVP, and I am helping others to develop and perhaps also become MVPs.

If you could ask Steve Ballmer one question about Microsoft, what would it be?

I would ask him, “If you believe, as Wall Street does, that the opposite of earnings growth is death, what is Microsoft's long range plan to stay viable considering the company cannot continue to grow indefinitely?”

What do you think the best software ever written was?

I am dating myself, but I was most amazed by Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX/eln realtime kernel (operating system). In a past life, I built embedded process and machine control systems for the automated manufacture of fiber optics, and I got a tremendous amount of enjoyment and satisfaction building sophisticated manufacturing systems using C++ on eln, with only some practical bounds of what the systems needed to do holding me back.

If you were the manager of Visual Basic, what would you change?

I would be more diligent in the role of evangelizing the language and changing the common perception of Visual Basic (VB) as a has-been language that is dwindling in importance. VB has grown significantly since the introduction of .NET, and it is the best environment for building a wide range of applications because it does it better and more quickly than with any other tool.

What are the best features/improvements of Visual Basic?

Moving VB to the .NET platform was absolutely the right move for the future of the language, enabling VB's continuing evolution. In VB2005, my favorite features are XML comments and the addition of generics. I am also very excited by the upcoming LINQ technologies, which will let developers query across different kinds of data in a consistent way.

What was the last book you read?

I tend to read only parts of tech books that I need or find most interesting, and the last book of which I read a substantial portion is “Professional .NET 2.0 Generics” by Tod Golding. I also read quite a bit in the fields of science and technology, and I like both science fiction and historical fiction. The book I just finished for fun is “Before the Dawn - Recovering the Lost History of our Ancestors” by Nicholas Wade. This is a fascinating book that overlays the archeological record of man's evolutionary history with recent DNA analyses, shedding much light on what really happened in prehistory and where.

What music CD do you recommend?

The CDs I have in rotation in my car now are “10,000 Days” by Tool, “With Teeth” by Nine Inch Nails, “Flyleaf” by Flyleaf, “Ten Thousand Fists” by Disturbed, and I will soon buy “Minutes to Midnight” by Linkin Park.

What makes you a great MVP?

Passion. Passion for – Visual Basic, the development process and dev tools, building communities, teaching and helping others, and making an impact.

What's in your computer bag?

A huge laptop with at least one external hard drive for VPCs. I always have an MSDN magazine and a Visual Studio magazine to read. I also carry a substantial toolkit including: a digital camera, PDA, mini USB hub, webcam, GPS receiver, earplugs/phones, USB keys, USB keyboard light, laser pointer, cereal box decoder ring, and lots of cables. I also carry a power inverter for 12-volt power connections when I am travelling.

What is the best thing that has happened since you have become an MVP?

It would have to be a toss-up between access to Microsoft resources and a constant stream of invites to do cool stuff. From the offers I get, I pick and choose what I really want to spend my "free" time doing.

What is your motto?

“Code well and prosper.”

Who is your hero?

Carl Sagan the late astronomer and astrobiologist at Cornell University who was a master at making science accessible to everyday people and also founded the Planetary Society. I also admire Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist at Cambridge who is disabled with Lou Gehrig's disease, but has the courage and determination to continue doing what he loves. For example, he recently experienced weightlessness aboard the NASA "vomit comet" aircraft.

What does success mean to you?

I define success by degrees of happiness - enjoying what I do both professionally and personally, enjoying the people with whom I do those things, and feeling that I am making an impact by helping others in many different ways.