I'm pleased to present this new article by developer and author Hugo Troche, "The Task Pattern: A Design Pattern for Processing and Monitoring Long-Running Tasks". This article is something of a first here at developer.* in that it is a detailed technical article. This is hopefully something you'll see more of in this space. Articles of this sort are something I've always wanted to publish, but so often these articles are tied to a particular technology, language, or platform. There are already many fine outlets on the web and in print for technical, how-to oriented articles, so I've always tried to make developer.* a home for articles that are too theoretical, too long, too short, too academic, not academic enough, too weird, or too "meta" oriented for the usual outlets. I think Hugo's description and exploration of his Task Pattern fits quite well.

It's probably a good idea to touch on the subject of the frequency of updates to the site. I would in a perfect world love to publish all kinds of great content up here on a weekly basis, and keeping with a monthly schedule was my original goal, but the fact is that developer.* at this moment is largely on auto pilot. This does not mean that I've abandoned the site, just that it's not my top priority these days. The full time job takes a lot of energy, of course, and with the writing I've been putting my energy into book projects. (The second edition of the VBScript Programmer's Reference comes out in a month or so (that's me on the cover with the bald head), and I've got two other books in the works, including a book-length version of Principled Programming.)

I am, however, always excited to publish the work of others, in particular of new writers. Hopefully developers like Hugo will continue to get reach out and send me good work to publish. If you have a finished article, or an idea for one, please get in touch.

All the best,
Dan