Skip to main content

CodeMash: Day 2

Well done! Well done. CodeMash really delivered. Day 2, for me, could be summed up as Scott Guthrie Day. I'm not sure how he pulled off 3 knowledge-laden, engaging presentations...all while on Redmond time. I kept noticing the clock on his laptop. During his keynote at 9am, his clock read 6am. And he was still going strong during his 3-4:15 discussion. Impressive. I hope he gets/got a few hours of nap time on the flight to SeaTac.

Highlights:
  • Dave Donaldson's review of NHibernate. This guy just impresses me. He's not a rock star (as in unapproachable, full of himself) but more like the people's developer. Down to earth. Human. Wants to help. I'm excited about the prospect of NHibernate. I've used NetTiers with good success but never really pushed the limits. Although, LINQ may trump NHibernate...
  • LINQ. This Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) will revolutionize traditional data access tier development. The Microsoft developer community made solid progress in recent times through leveraging shared source tools such as Enterprise Library/Patterns & Practices and FxCop and open source tools like NUnit. Embracing agile and TDD also helps. But, I think LINQ will finally bring ORM to a place where developers feel comfortable implementing it and enterprises feel comfortable allowing it into their shops (there's still a reluctance to accept OSS in a lot of the bigger shops). Guthrie's demos and information nailed it on LINQ.
Overall, CodeMash delivered great value in a short period of time for a very reasonable price. Great work, guys. I look forward to next year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Starting a New Blog with my Cousin

On 9/15/2006, my cousin (he's really a 2nd cousin many times removed...I'm not convinced we're actually related ;-) John Ingrisano and I will launch a new blog targeted to the small business owner. He'll provide most of the content and I will provide the technical and marketing expertise. Ok, ok, starting a blog isn't rocket science but we're aiming to [eventually] derive some sort of profit from this venture, so I plan on doing this right. The two blogs I currently maintain live on the free Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. I'll be covering the adventure here on Effective Thoughts--providing insight as to what worked and what didn't. To start off, our first activities are: Choose a name and a theme Find a host Help John learn the ins and outs of blogging Implement the site: look/feel, about/bio, 1st content, announcements, etc. Understand marketing best practices To this end, here is some research I compiled: Finding a host http://en...

Switching the Parents to Ubuntu...?

I spent a half hour or so recently on the phone walking my Mom through a technical issue. Tentatively, I diagnosed her issue as a hard drive failure. She brought it over on her last visit and sure enough, the Dell XPS 450 from circa 1999 sounds like a bad coin-operated laundry at full capacity. I was aghast to discover she's running Windows 98. Ugh. Also, her recovery disk is just that--for recovery. I don't believe I'll be able to re-install Win98 on a new hard drive. That, coupled with the end of Microsoft (and Dell) support for Win98, got me thinking about Linux. (and she's not intense about her computing needs...and she doesn't want to spend much money...) I've been reading good things about switching one's parents to Ubuntu. Any thoughts out there?