The Book Is Out!

It’s here!  Woo!

Pretty amazing to come home from an errand and find a massive box on the stoop!  (I have to use “stoop” because a new hire is a UK expat so I’ve got to learn the lingo.)

CodeMash: The British Are Coming!

We’ve actually had two folks from a firm in the UK register for CodeMash!  They’re coming over specifically for CodeMash and hope to tie their visit in to a client site visit, but the client work is secondary.  They’re looking at CodeMash as a very unique forum for networking and “getting some cutting edge ideas.”

Let me tell you: if you’re whining about having to drive four hours up from Cincinnati to attend CodeMash then I don’t want to hear it!  These two are travelling over an ocean to attend!

One of the travellers remarked on the motivation for attending CodeMash: “…there’s nothing like this in Europe at the moment.”  How amazingly cool is that?

CodeMash: Go register now.

CodeMash: Low Room Rates Extended!

If you haven’t yet registered for CodeMash, then I’ve got good news for you!  The great folks at the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky have extended the great room rate of $88 until 28 December.

The agenda for CodeMash is finalized and it’s loaded with amazing stuff regardless of the language or platform you’re currently involved with.

Looking to learn more about what’s happening in .NET?  Look up the sessions on Smart Clients, Closures in C# 3.0, Data-Driven Applications with LINQ, or Tips and Tricks for ASP.NET 2.0 and AJAX.

Want to find out things on some of the “newcomer” languages you’ve not explored yet?  Check out the sessions on Enterprise Python Architecture, Rails and Ruby Introduction, or Caffienated PHP.  (And some of those languages are older than Java, BTW…)

What about you folks who are happy with the language you’re in and aren’t interested in expanding that envelope?  Then you need to attend larger-scope talks on design, architecture, and methodologies from great minds in the industry.  Check out the keynotes and sessions like Lean Software Development, Beyond Test Driven Development, Source Code Management with Subversion, and The Productive Programmer.

The conference fee is $149 and rooms are $88 per night.  That’s an insanely cheap price to hear folks like Neal Ford, Scott Guthrie, Bill Wagner, and Bruce Eckel talk.

Go register!

CodeMash: Early Bird Discount Ending!

The Early Bird discount for CodeMash ends tomorrow.  That means you’ll have to pay $149 instead of $99 for the conference rate, and you’ll lose out on the killer $88 rate for the great rooms (and waterpark access!) at the Kalahari Lodge.

I’ve blogged the heck out of this event because it’s going to be an amazing one.  Don’t lose out on your early bird rates — get on top of things and get cracking!  Go register now!

Exciting New PowerShell Book!

Manning Press always impressed me with their books I gotten in the past.  Java Development with Ant is a terrific book if you use any automated build system because the book lays out a great methodology for approaching and implementing automated builds.  Hibernate in Action is critical if you do any work at all with O/RM systems and specifically if you work with Hibernate or NHibernate.

The only problem with Manning was that they were slow to get into the .NET space.  That’s changed, however, and now they’re slowly building up a nice catalog of good-looking books on great topics.

I’m particularly excited about the early release copy of Windows PowerShell in Action I just got.  I haven’t gotten far in to the book, but it appears to do a great job of laying out the basics and nitty-gritty of PowerShell.

I fooled around with PowerShell as part of working on my book, but left off playing with it months ago.  PowerShell in Action will push me to do more playing with Monad I mean PowerShell, and perhaps even get some real work done.

Testing Events with Anonymous Delegates

Phil Haack has a nice post showing how to use anonymous delegates to test the source of events.  Anonymous delegates are something I’ve only scratched the surface with, so it’s nice to see a great, practical use for them.

Book Review: Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

I’m not completely through this book yet but it’s such a great one that I wanted to plop out a quick review of it to pass on the word.

Are you sick of books on XP which seem too much like mystical hand-waving with really shitty lousy examples of paired programming sessions?  Are you sick of books on patterns which are too convoluted and abstract to make any sense at all?  Are you sick of books full of silly, contrived examples which don’t make any real-world sense?  What about books on UML which approach it from a near-religious dogma direction with no room for any deviation or common sense?

If so, then you badly, badly need to read Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# .  This book, written by the father/son team of Robert and Micah Martin is part of the impressive Robert C. Martin series on Agile from Addison Wesley/Prentice Hall.

This book is amazingly great from start to finish.  All the basics of good agile development are covered clearly and sensibly in the first section: what agile is, how to go about it, why testing and planning are so critical, and where refactoring fits in all of this.  Design and general patters are hit in the second section, again in a clear, concise, and sensible fashion — and with common sense thrown in. 

The final two sections cover a real-world case study implementation of a payroll system.  Here the rubber meets the asphalt: walking through use cases, building transactions based on smartly-chosen patterns, discussion of what patterns make sense where and why, implementation, packaging, and evolution.

I found myself shaking my head in wonder as I read this book and stumbled across one nugget of gold after another.  Some bits of goodness pop out in the middle of nowhere simply because the authors are so well-versed in their domain that they’re letting fly wisdom even when discussing other topics.  An example of this is in the XP pairing session episode where some discussion of increment operator side effects is tossed in the middle of another discussion stream.  You read that section once and pass over it, only to do a head check, bounce back and re-read it while nodding your head and saying “Yeah, that’s absolutely right and I might not have caught that otherwise.”

As an aside, this book had the first XP paired programming episode I’ve ever read which didn’t make me barf.  Other example episodes were so contrived and smarmily written that I thought for sure I was going to heave.  This pairing epsiode is real life stuff, complete with some strong discussion between partners, good examples of refactoring and patterns, and also shows the developers making and recovering from various mistakes.

Another bit of greatness is the chapter on UML.  The authors are emphatic about keeping UML tightly in check and using it only in specific cases where it makes clear sense.  Mountains of UML diagrams are not the answer; the authors show where a few concise diagrams make perfect sense.

More goodness can be found throughout the book in the gems relating to any number of design issues such as a small example of a problem the authors put forth to students of their various design/patterns courses: build a coffee maker.  The authors go through the most common result they see and show the specific problem areas of that solution — and then show a solution that is amazing in its simplicity, elegance, and maintainability.

Micah Martin, the co-author and son of the other co-author Robert Martin, makes a great statement in his introduction to the book.  He talks about his father’s first edition of the book (winner of the 2003 Jolt Award) not making much of an impact on the .NET community.  This new edition, specific for C#, certainly should make a tremendous impact on the .NET community.  If it doesn’t then we have ourselves (or our colleagues) to blame for not caring enough to improve ourselves by reading seminal works.

This book is a critical read for folks at any level of experience.  I’m going to do my best to make sure it gets on the required reading list for developers at my company.

(Go register for CodeMash, by the way.)

Good Series on Building a Web Site

Dan Hounshell, a good buddy from the Dayton .NET Developers Group, is writing a series of blog posts on a site he’s architecting.  Dan’s a very smart guy and writes very well, so his series should be well worth reading.  Dan’s focusing on building his skills in a few new tech areas and is using the site as a vehicle for that learning.  His series is a great idea and I’m looking forward to watching it progress!

Win a Zune!

Want to win a Zune?  Drew Robbins came up with a great contest: Blog about CodeMash and have a chance to win a Zune!  Details on the CodeMash site.

Six days left for you to register at the early bird discount rate — and get the insanely low price of $88 per night for rooms.

For you procrastinators: Be advised that after 18 December you won’t be able to get the discount rate, and you may not be able to get a room at all.  Kalahari Lodge sells out fast this time of year and the block of rooms they’re holding for us goes away after the 18th.  Move fast.  Move now!

Book News: Off to the Printer!

I’ve just gotten word from my editor today that Windows Developer Power Tools is going off to the printer on Thursday.  It will hit warehouses (and the doorsteps of contributors) around 20 December. Wow!

I’m not sure when orders will head out from places like Amazon, but I’d think it will be shortly thereafter.

James and I started off on this adventure nearly a year ago, writing up the proposal some time around February and getting underway in late March.  (I think.)  It’s been a heck of a ride and I’m really looking forward to seeing the end result land on my doorstep in a few weeks.  Whoof.

CodeMash: Spread the Word Via a Flyer!

So I’m sitting in a nice cottage right off the beach in Vero Beach, Florida with nothing better to do than sip a little bit of Iron Horse bubbly and clean up after a nice dinner eaten while looking out at the Atlantic ocean.

Yeah, my life sucks.

But back to more important things: Help spread the word about CodeMash!  We’ve got a great flier which talks about CodeMash — print that out and hang it up around your workplace or share some copies with colleagues and other interested geeks.  Also, a few days ago I wrote a post that highlights the value of folks attending such a conference.  This is great fodder for convincing your boss to either let you go to CodeMash or better yet pay your way there.

Off for Vacation!

Notice to all: You’ll be spared more rants about CodeMash for a bit: we’re taking off for a long vacation to celebrate my wife’s retirement from the Air Force.

I’ll be hard at work on a Disney Cruise for the next chunk of days.

OK, maybe not so hard…

But while I’m gone you really should go register for CodeMash.  Really.

Why Conferences Matter, and How To Pitch To Your Boss

So my blog has been 90% CodeMash of late.  Go figure.  If you’ve read my blog for long you know that I consider good conferences as potential watershed events in the career of geeks.  Software Development Expo West in 2003 was such an event for me, and I’m passionate about pushing Code Camps and other conferences as great ways to improve your skill level and explode your passion about your field.

But how do you convince your management that attending conferences isn’t just them tossing money away without any chance of a return on their investment?  Below is a pitch that might help out.  Yes, it’s framed in CodeMash terms, but that’s becase CodeMash is an insane value when you consider who you get to interact with for two days. 

Maybe try this approach if you’re getting pushback on the cost of a conference.  It may just work for you.

So on to the pitch:

Your developers are a critical asset to your company, relied upon to help solve tough problems in your business and bring value to your bottom line.  To effectively do their job, these developers must possess an odd conglomeration of skills, including problem solving, artistry, engineering, and mystical hand waving.  Keeping those skills honed is vital if your developers are going to remain at their best – but how can you provide skills development for those folks without breaking the bank?

One of the best ways to keep your development staff at the top of their game is through ongoing education, and one of the best venues for ongoing education is software developer conferences.  Conferences provide a tremendously motivating, educational environment where your technical staff can attend sessions from industry leaders, hear keynote addresses from luminaries who drive great changes in their domains, and gather with peers to discuss everyday problems.

CodeMash (www.CodeMash.org) is a unique conference for software developers in and around the Heartland region (MI, OH, KY, IN, IL, PA), and is being held 18-19 January, 2007 in Sandusky, Ohio.  CodeMash will bring together a large number of developers from the Java, Ruby, PHP, .NET, and other communities for this ground-breaking event.  CodeMash features some of the software development industry’s greatest minds who will present sessions on a wide range of topics.  

CodeMash will feature keynote addresses from three industry leaders:

·         Scott Guthrie, Microsoft Developer Division Manager

·         Neal Ford, noted author and Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.

·         Bruce Eckel, industry leader and CEO of MindView, Inc.

Attendees will be able to select from a wide range of more than 40 sessions presented by nationally and regionally recognized experts on a wide range of topics such as:

·         Curry Favor with Closures: An Introduction to Functional Programming in C# and VB.NET (Bill Wagner, Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP and author of “Effective C#”)

·         SOA as a Conversation (Ken Faw, Regional Practice Director, Perficient, Inc.)

·         The Productive Programmer (Neal Ford, editor “No Fluff, Just Stuff”)

·         Let NHibernate Be Your Data Access Layer (Dave Donaldson, Microsoft MVP)

·         Lean Software Development (Mary Poppendeick, internationally recognized expert on agile/lean development and author of “Lean Software Development”)

·         Maximum Velocity MySQL (Jay Pipes, North American Community Relations Manager, MySQL)

·         Improve Your Testing with Open Source Test Tools (Jim Holmes, Microsoft MVP and author of “Windows Developer Power Tools”)

·         EJB3 – What’s New? (Joseph Faisal Nusairat, author of “Beginning JBoss Seam”)

·         Ruby on Rails for Java Developers (Rob Stevenson, Quick Solutions, Inc.)

Normally conferences can be a costly proposition, running thousands of dollars for registration and hotel fees.  However, CodeMash is a community-driven, non-profit event run by volunteers – which means the event’s prices are incredibly low: $99 registration fee (early bird, expires 18 December), and  room rate of $88 per night at the fabulous Kalahari Resort (www.KalahariResorts.com).

You’ll need to act fast, though: CodeMash’s early bird discount ends 18 December, and the special room rate of $88 isn’t guaranteed past that date.

CodeMash’s payoff to your company is tangible: improved developer skills and motivated, excited teams who are fired up to solve your tough business problems.

CodeMash: Scott Ambler is Speaking!

Holy friggin’ smokes.  We just got news that Scott Ambler will be coming to CodeMash to give a couple talks.

I am completely flattened at the amazing quality of industry-leading talent we’ve got lined up.

Scott Guthrie.  Mary Poppendeick.  Bill Wagner.  Jay Pipes.  Bruce Eckel.  Neal Ford.

And now Scott Ambler.

You are missing one great opportunity if you don’t go register now.

Why Some Folks Object To Agile

Elisabeth Hendrickson is a Very Smart Tester who writes a lot of good stuff on her blog.

One of her latest posts talks about why some folks object to Agile out of fear, ignorance, whatever.  One particularly salient bit: “Most of all, I wonder when those people with so much to say against Agile actually listened enough to figure out what it is.”  I once had to deal with a guy who insisted that Extreme Programming was simply “hacker coding.”  It was readily apparent that this guy was simply scared of being losing some of his control freak turf.

Elisabeth’s post is short and well worth reading!

'Tis The Season

Christmas is nearing, that’s for certain.  Forget the Black Friday sales insanity.  There’s one certain indicator Christmas is right around the corner: A Charlie Brown Christmas hits the airwaves.

That’s where we spent a half-hour tonight, and there’s no better way to tamp down one’s stress level than to watch such a classic with two small kids, a nice wife, and a bowl of popcorn.

Dayton-Cincy Code Camp Registration Open!

The second annual Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp is now open for registration!

The camp will be held on 24 March, 2007, at the Wingate Inn in West Chester, Ohio. 

The Code Camp will be free and full of great content.  Make sure to take advantage of this terrific event!

CodeMash Session List Is Close to Finalized!

We’ve been working tremendously hard on lining up sessions for CodeMash and we’ve got a pretty amazing list of sessions so far.  We’ve had something close to 100 submissions and have winnowed them down to around 30 so far.  We’re leaving some room for expansion since the submission deadline is November 30th, but we wanted to get content up on the site to show how great this conference is going to be!

In case you’ve just started reading this blog, let me recap what CodeMash is all about:  CodeMash is a community-driven, non-profit conference for software developers being held 18–19 January, 2007. It’s a cross-platform, cross-language conference meant to bring together folks from a wide range of software development communities.  The energy and knowledge transfer that happens at such events is really pretty staggering, which is why we’re so excited about CodeMash.

As a side note, I went to SD West in 2004 and it was a life-altering experience.  Seriously.  I got to hear folks like Josh Holmes, Steve McConnell, Elliotte Rusty Harold, Alan Holub, Scott Meyers, Michelle Leroux Bustamante, and a bunch of other amazing folks from a lot of different knowledge domains.  It was a completely transforming experience that was directly responsible for me completely changing the course of my career.  I’m not saying that CodeMash will be the same thing for you, but I can certainly hope it is!

Back to CodeMash.  We’ve got technical content from Gadgets in Vista to EJB3.  (That’s Java stuff for you .NET folks.  Duh.)  We’ve got methodology stuff from Test Driven Development in Python to Lean Software Development.  We’ve got platform agnostic stuff from Open Source Test Tools (by, cough cough, yours truely) to The Productive Programmer.

Looking for stellar, industry-leading speakers?  How about keynotes from Scott Guthrie of Microsoft, Neal Ford of ThoughtWorks, and Bruce Eckel of Mind View?  Still not good enough?  How about hearing Mary Poppendeick, Jason Gilmore, Bill Wagner, Chris Judd, or Jay Pipes present sessions?

Still not good enough?  How about some of these session offerings:

• Building and Deploying Smart Clients with Visual Studio 2005
• Building Enterprise Smart Clients using a Services Oriented Architecture
• The Productive Programmer
• Ruby on Rails for Java Developers
• Real World Continuous Integration
• Let NHibernate Be Your Data Layer
• SOA as a Conversation
• A Tale of Two Web Toolkits: TurboGears and the GWT
• Selenium radically simplifies testing Websites!
• Ruby on Rails for Java Developers
• What makes Rails possible: an introduction to the Ruby language
• Lean Software Development
• Introduction to Ajax
• Beyond TDD: Exploring the benefits beyond testing.
• JRuby - Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!
• Curry Favor with Closures: An introduction to Functional Programming with C# and VB.NET

Perhaps one of the neatest things about the conference is its venue: the Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio.  The Kalahari has great rooms, a great venue, and an indoor water park to boot!  (You can see photos of the Kalhari at my Flickr site.)  The Kalahri’s also given us a tremendous break on rooms: $88 per night.

This conference is going to be terrific, and I hope you’ll register now.  It’s going to be a terrific event!

(Also, please consider passing on word of our sponsorship opportunities — companies will have a great chance to reach out to a pretty unique group of motivated geeks!)

More Firefox Vulnerabilities

Firefox 2.0 appears to have a pretty major security issue with its password manager.  As always, discussion in the Slashdot article’s comments thread is pretty funny, ranging from usual excusatory whining to some ascerbic, point-on blurbs.  An example of the latter, from a comment titled “I sense a disturbance in the force”:

...as though millions of Firefox users were laughing at IE users, and were suddenly silenced.
Cue "still more secure" arguments now.

I love me some Firefox, but I’m not blithely accepting that it’s nirvana for security.  One of the few things I disliked about the otherwise terrific book Building The Perfect PC was their ABM mentality on how everything Microsoft was evil and awful and you’d be sooooo much more secure by just installing Firefox and Thunderbird.

Sorry.  Not the case.

Make smart choices in how you go about using your software, and don’t naievely think you’ve got a silver bullet just because the crowd says so.

Spread the CodeMash Love!

We’d love to have you help spread the word about CodeMash — so we’ve made that a bit easier: We’ve posted up a one-page flyer which gives the elevator speech for CodeMash.  (“Dude, it’s just coooooool.”)

Feel free to grab that, print off a billion copies and plaster them all over boards at work, telephone poles in your city[1], your neighbor’s garage door, or any other spot where you think interested geeks might see them. (“What about those psyche wards where all those COBOL and assembly language guys ended up in?”  Quiet, you!)