I became a DevExpress customer on 12 February 2003.
By 2012 I found myself asking an interesting question:
Could I build my entire development environment around a single vendor?
That led me to write a blog post titled “100% DX”, where I explored the idea of standardising on the DevExpress ecosystem and evaluating whether one vendor could provide everything needed to build modern applications. At the time it was an experiment. Today it feels almost prophetic.
What started with a set of UI controls eventually expanded into:
- CodeRush
- WinForms
- ASP.NET
- WPF
- Reporting
- Dashboards
- Blazor
- .NET MAUI
- Office APIs
- AI-powered development tools
A year later, in 2013, I joined DevExpress as a Technical Evangelist. That wasn’t because I was looking for a vendor relationship. It was because I had already spent ten years building commercial software with the products and genuinely believed in what the company was doing. In many ways, I was a customer long before I became an evangelist, I still approach every new release with the mindset of a developer first.
Looking Back
When I purchased my first DevExpress licence in February 2003:
- .NET was barely a year old
- Windows XP was current
- Azure didn’t exist
- Smartphones weren’t part of everyday business
- AI assistants belonged in science fiction
Twenty-three years later, DevExpress continues to evolve alongside the Microsoft ecosystem.
I’ve now spent:
- 23 years as a customer
- 13 years as a Technical Evangelist
- 36 years building software
Technology has changed dramatically during that time.
The mission hasn’t.
Identify friction.
Simplify processes.
Improve productivity.
That’s why I’m still excited every time a new DevExpress release arrives, not because it’s another version number, but because every release gives developers new ways to focus less on infrastructure and more on solving real-world business problems.