ALT.NET Seattle Recap

Time for the obligatory recap…finally!

Before I left I wasn’t as pumped up about Seattle as I was for Austin in the fall. This is because my role has changed during the past 6 months and day to day development is very much a thing of the past for me. I suppose the real question was whether all this was still relevant to me. Thankfully the answer was a resounding yes.

Before the whole thing kicked off Dave Laribee asked me what I wanted to get out of the event this time. My answer was simple:

1. Drink too much
2. Have some good conversations

Obviously there was an element of intentional humor in my answers (1st bullet). However the key to this type of event (Open Spaces + lots of REALLY smart, open minded people) is that your preconceptions about a wide array of topics will be challenged. And they were. I talked a ridiculous amount of tech. On the Saturday I geeked out from 8 am until 2 am the next morning. Talk about brain overload!

For example Greg Young‘s views on DDD using object databases and building super “ility” systems really got me thinking about a whole new approach to building applications. I definitely need to spend more time exploring these concepts.

There were also some excellent discussions about Auto Mocking Containers and whether or not they are evil. My conclusion was that they are not inherently evil…but that they can definitely be used for evil purposes (hide code smells). And the entire discussion highlighted how difficult automated testing really is and how much knowledge and experience you need to get it right.

Chris Ortman had the brilliant  idea of a developer exchange. I know that there are some obvious barriers (damn you corporate America!) but there are huge potential benefits too. If we as a community can figure out a way to make this happen then we’re all going to get a lot better.

One aspect of the event that almost everyone agreed upon was that the identity crisis in the ALT.NET community is over. There were no sessions that attempted to define ALT.NET. And this was good. We (as a community) have grown up!

It was also very encouraging to see a lot less of anti Microsoft sentiment than last time. Part of this is due to the aforementioned maturing of the community. But more importantly the two sides (deliberate choice of words) are working much more closely together. So much has improved over the past 6 months. For example we now have access to the source and the tests for the MVC Framework. Woo hoo! And there is a two way dialog in process about how to do things. Prism is a great example of this (great work Glenn).

Time to stop rambling. I want to close by saying that if you haven’t attended this event before then I implore you to try and go to Austin in October. You’ll get 3 months better in 3 days. And it doesn’t come any better than that.