Monday, September 24, 2007
I wish I could be at the ALT.NET conference...

Reading posts like this one from Jeremy Miller really make me wish I could make it to the ALT.NET conference in Austin. There are almost too many good points in his post for me to comment on, but I'll go ahead and try.

I completely and wholeheartedly agree with his comments on the general lack of knowledge that developers have regarding real OOP and software design concepts. Many of the developers I work with are terrified of the upcoming releases of the .NET framework. The thing is, they're just new releases in tools and libraries. Sure, they provide value - I don't know how many times I realize that some UI I'm trying to work with in WinForms would be ridiculously easy to build in WPF. And WCF does a great job at abstracting the goo that connects all of my objects. However, if I don't have a good background in solid OOP design and separation of concerns, WCF won't help me at all anyway. These new tools aren't going to do anything to make me a better developer. I'll still be able to write awful code.

I commend these guys for trying to get to the heart of the issues in the .NET community and I hope that the solution isn't to just move to Ruby and Ruby on Rails. My opinion is that we have to fix the problems in our community - if we just migrate to another community, the problems and lack of knowledge will eventually follow us. I can still write bad code in Ruby, too.

Being one of the guys who won't be able to make it, I have a few requests. I would really like to see the content from the conference posted online or made accessible to those of us who won't be able to make it, particularly considering the fact that the conference sold out. Microsoft did a good job in posting content from both MiX and TechEd this year and I think that would be a welcome addition from this conference as well.

Keep pushing this knowledge out - I'm optimistic that things will improve.

Conferences
posted on Monday, September 24, 2007 7:02:45 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [5]
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Tech Ed – Day 4 Review
Tech Ed – Day 3 Review
Tech Ed – Day 2 Review
Monday, September 24, 2007 12:49:05 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Do you really think that these concerns apply to us? Not that we shouldn't be using the practices that Jeremy advocates, but I think our situation is a bit different.

I don't think our shop could even be considered part of the "MSDN way" .NET community Jeremy is talking about. Getting our co-workers to the point that Jeremy's co-workers are at right now would be a monumental task by itself. Most of the people we work with are still mired in a procedural programming environment. Even when they start using .NET (or even "classic" ASP), they write procedural programs in an object oriented environment. When someone doesn't understand OOP, things like TDD (or BDD), continuous integration, etc are out the window.

And also, no offense to the ALT .NET guys, but the idea of moving to Ruby and RoR as Jeremy talks about smells a bit like a whiny teenage musician who wants to move out to the coast on his own because his parents "don't understand" him. Somehow, I don't think things would be quite as utopian as they look on the surface.
Brian Sullivan
Monday, September 24, 2007 3:34:48 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
My point is more that a core understanding of OOP is far more important than technology. I get the "blank stare" every time I mention something like WPF, WCF or .NET 3.5. People are scared of new releases of technology, but really, it is just a new tool release. They need instead to get a good foundation in good design so that they stop writing procedural code in an object oriented environment.

I like the ALT.NET movement because it takes more focus away from the tools and puts more focus on better design and practices. It shouldn't matter if we're coding classic ASP or WPF, we should still try to write good code - which is where a lot of our peers are failing.

I do agree with you that moving to RoR probably wouldn't be as nice as everyone likes to think - as I said, you can write bad code in any language. The difference right now is that the Rails community is currently a well-educated one. As soon as Rails gets a following of people who don't follow good practices, there will be procedural code in OOP all over again.
David Mohundro
Monday, September 24, 2007 6:05:45 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Hear, hear.
Brian Sullivan
Thursday, September 27, 2007 2:11:27 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
@David,
I too am NOT going to be able to make it to the altnetconf. But like you said, hopefully there will be some really good content posted online (i.e. perhaps screencasts, interviews, etc...). :)

Oh, and just wanted to point out that the whole reason for some of these languages and frameworks like MonoRail, Ruby, RoR is to continue to take the focus off of technical plumbing work and be able to spend much more time on the more important tasks of driving out the design of the business domain/rules and UI. My 0.02.
Joey Beninghove
Thursday, September 27, 2007 8:11:58 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Joey, thanks for the comment! You're right about frameworks like MonoRail and RoR - they really do make it easier to separate concerns and focus more on the domain. I think, even with those tools, a good understanding of the patterns that drive them (like MVC) will help us to use those tools even better. I've been spending a good deal of time in WinForms where I've been attempting to practice and understand the MVP approach and, honestly, I think I have a better understanding about how to build better applications as a result.
David Mohundro
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