Christopher Duncan

Christopher Duncan is an author, musician, veteran programmer and corporate troublemaker, and is also President of Show Programming of Atlanta, Inc. Irreverent, passionate, unconventional and sometimes controversial, his focus has always been less on the academic and more on simply delivering the goods, breaking any rules that happen to be inconvenient at the moment.

SQLServerCentral Article

Pro Developer : This is Business

In his travels, Christopher Duncan has come to recognize a great many similarities between programmers and musicians. Both have the fire, passion and soul of the artist. And all too often, both are aweful when it comes to the business end of things. Business - you know, that aspect of your work where they actually pay you at the end of the day?

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2003-02-25

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SQLServerCentral Article

Pro Developer : Throwing Money Out the Window

It's common knowledge among programmers that most of the ills of the software industry, and most particularly the companies where we work, could be solved by simply letting the technical people make the technical decisions. Obviously, since this is so incredibly logical and sensible, it's a given that most companies leave management decisions to managers, and technical decisions to the computer guys.

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2002-12-18

3,425 reads

SQLServerCentral Article

Pro Developer: Improving Your Career In Any Economy

Like many other areas of business, the tech industry has weathered the occasional slump over the past few decades. It's only natural that the fate of techies is closely linked to the tides of the business. However, in any economy, weak or strong, some people prosper and advance while others suffer the consequences.

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2002-11-29

3,592 reads

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Question of the Day

The Decoded Value

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000)));
SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded) 

See possible answers