Episode 100
This is a very special 100th episode of Technology and Friends - a show I have been creating for over 18 months. Thank you to all who participated.
Thank you for watching Technology and Friends
I attended a high school reunion tonight and had a blast.
Maybe it's because we see each other so seldom; maybe it's the festiveness of the occasion; maybe it's our shared history or our diverging paths; but this group seems to get nicer as they get older.
It's hard to believe it's been 30 years since I graduated from Grosse Pointe North High School.
For the event, I made a slideshow of photos that my classmates sent me. Many people told me they enjoyed it, so I will share it here.
You can view the original photos here.
You might think that full-color illustrations would make very little difference in a technical book.
But Beginning JavaScript and CSS Development with jQuery by Richard York focuses so much on user interfaces that the added color makes the samples more clear. When the author lists code to change the color of a paragraph, the illustration shows the new and old colors to drive home the concept.
York starts with the basics of jQuery – selecting elements on a page and applying styles dynamically – and moves progressively into more advanced topics, such as making Ajax calls and accessing the jQuery API. He devotes about a third of the book to jQueryUI, a library that contains controls designed to build rich, interactive web interfaces without the need for a lot of code.
York explains the challenges inherent in developing applications with Javascript (the need code to different Document Object Models for each browser) and how jQuery addresses this by providing a single programming model that abstracts away the different browser DOMS.
The book is filled with examples, showing the HTML, CSS and jQuery demonstrating each point. You can read/copy these from the book or download them from the Wrox site.
This book is aimed at someone with experience in HTML and CSS, but little to no Javascript or jQuery knowledge. For those just getting started in jQuery this is an easy to follow book where you can learn the concepts and quickly become productive.
It’s no secret that software developers, managers and analysts do a poor job estimating projects. Few IT projects complete within the time they are estimated and far more go over the original estimate than under it.
Steve McConnell knows how difficult estimation can be His 2006 book Software Estimation is subtitled Demystifying the Black Art.
Developing reasonable estimates of software projects may not be a black art, but it does cause problems and most people fail at it for a variety of reasons.
McConnell refers to estimation as an art, not because it has no basis in science, but because formulas don't tell the whole story. Experience and difficult-to-measure inputs are required to generate a complete estimate. And even then, you may still get it wrong.
When McConell lists sources of estimation error (subjectivity, missing tasks, unwarranted optimism, excess precision), it's startling how many of those factors I have experienced or contributed in my own career.
The author provides various methods for creating an estimate and guidance on improving the accuracy of your estimates. Among his advice is:
If part of your job includes estimating software projects, this is an essential book to guide you. Like most of McConnell’s books, I recommend it.
Here is a fun slideshow of photos I took at the Codestock Developers conference in June
You can view all my photos from Codestock here.
Today, I received a message from Microsoft awarding me a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual C#.
I have been aware of this award ever since my friend Nino earned one years ago. I never quite understood the selection criteria but I knew that it was recognition of a willingness to share knowledge with others in the community. Since sharing knowledge is something in which I a lot of take pride, I am happy to be recognized for this.
A Microsoft employee once told me that he wouldn't nominate anyone who sought to become an MVP, so I never tried to reveal any aspirations, working in the community because I enjoyed doing so. I even joked about it, posting an e-mail on this blog from Mike Woelmer, who nominated me as an NVP (Not Very Professional). But the truth is that I did want this award and that I am excited and proud and grateful to receive it.
I want to publicly thank Jennifer Marsman and Alan Stevens who nominated me. I was told that some other folks said nice things on my behalf as part of this process. I don't know who they all were, so I won't list them here, but know that this was much appreciated.
I am aware of some tangible benefits - software, admission to the MVP summit, access to the product team - and I know there are a few other benefits that I haven't sorted through yet. But, for me the most important benefit is recognition by my peers.
And for that I am grateful.
Mike Neel does an amazing job with Codestock. Two years ago, he (along with Alan Stevens) introduced open spaces to the heartland; Last year, he wrote an application that allowed attendees to vote on their favorite sessions; and this year, he held the keynote in an classic movie theater and invited Rachel Appel to talk about community and bring onstage others to give their views of community.
Two days after Codestock (and a day after a 9-hour drive home from Knoxville, TN), I’m still processing the information learned.
I delivered two presentations and hosted a discussion panel. My first presentation – Writing Your First ASP.Net MVC Application – was well-received. I love showing people how accessible a hot technology like MVC is. In the afternoon, I gave a 2-hour presentation on An Introduction to Relational Database and T-SQL. I had no slides: I spent most of the talk showing examples of writing T-SQL code to modify schemas and data. I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested in this topic, but I heard some positive feedback. Many in the audience were experienced C# developers, who knew very little about the data they were accessing; and there were a couple experienced people who listened to get ideas on teaching this topic to others.
Because I had 4 hours of material to present, I spent most of Day 1, delivering or preparing my presentations. As a result, I was unable to observe much of the conference on Friday. My evening was free, so I was able to enjoy a nice dinner with about 20 folks from the community, watch the keynote, and hang out in the hotel lobby talking with developers from all across the US and Europe. I also sneaked in the filming of a couple episodes of Technology and Friends.
Saturday, my only responsibility was hosting a Panel Discussion – How to Put on a Great Conference. I did one really smart thing: I invited some really smart people to be on the panel. Because of this, I had to do very little during the discussion. I would ask an open-ended question, such as “What is the first thing you need to think about when planning a conference” and the conversation flowed with many great ideas exchanged. (The most popular answers to this question were venue, date and goals). Jamie Wright made a video recording of this session and I plan to release it soon as an episode of Technology And Friends.
I was able to watch a few sessions on Saturday.
Chris Woodruff asked me to film the premiere of a new talk he created called “Embracing Failure”. Chris emphasizes that we should examine our shortcomings, accept responsibility for them and use them to improve ourselves.
Patrick Foley gave a presentation on becoming and independent software vendor (ISV). Patrick suggests that you don't try to tackle every feature on every platform: Instead, start by focusing on one platform and do something better than everyone else.
In Nathan Blevins’s Mindstorming presentation, he showed off programs that controlled a car, making it drive, turn and automatically avoid falling off a ledge.
Saturday evening included a dinner sponsored by Telerik (Thanks Rob and Sasha) and a trip to Alan Stevens’s house for an evening of ping pong, cigars and fellowship.
During my time in Knoxville, I also spent a lot of time picking the brains of other attendees and speakers. I met a lot of intelligent and passionate people at this conference. I was late for dinner every night because I found myself engaged in a conversation with someone about error handling or MVC view engines or search engine optimization or one of dozens of other topics. Often I turned on the camera when I realized how much information I was getting from a conversation, so many of these talks will be available on future shows.
As with most conferences, it was the people that made this one. Codestock attracts many of the same people that attend local events in Michigan and Ohio. But it also draws people from New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Alabama, and many other parts of the country. There were even people from Manitoba, Canada and from the United Kingdom.
I’m already looking forward to my next trip to Tennessee (DevLink in Nashville in August) and my trip to Codestock next year. Let me know if you will be there.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and E.B. White changed my life.
In 1919, E.B. White was a student in William Strunk Jr's Cornell English class. The course textbook - written by Strunk a year earlier - impressed White enough that he decided to revise and expand it 40 years later.
While Strunk's version focused primarily on rules of proper English grammar, White added sections on writing style.
White argued that writing can be grammatically correct but poor quality, if it lacks good style. In his revised edition, White established guidelines by which a writer can improve his or her writing style.
The book has been revised several times over the years as the English language and the audience have changed and evolved.
The major points of the Elements of Style are
Most of these rules can be broken, White tells us.
The Elements of Style is often criticized because many great writers ignore this book's advice. But White does not claim to preach dogma: He provides guidelines that will improve most writing.
But we should understand the rules that we are breaking and we should break them for good reason.
If you do any writing in English, you will benefit from this book. At less than a hundred pages, the time investment is small but it packs more information than much larger books.
This is a book that I read every few years because it reminds me of the power of strong, concise writing.
Episode 94
In this show, Joe Wirtley discusses how he addressed the challenges in building an e-commerce site.
Episode 93
In this interview, Dr David Truxall describes the features of Microsoft Team Foundation Server
Episode 92
At the 2010 ann arbor Day of .Net, I hosted a panel discussion in front of a live audience.
Michael Eaton, Jay Harris, Patrick Steele, Jim Holmes and Jason Follas described how they cope with the information overload of keeping up with technologies.
Interest in F# has risen dramatically with the release of Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft's
decision to include this language with this product. Many of us are scrambling
to understand this new language and how it relates to our software projects.
F# is a functional language, which means that it focuses on giving developers the
ability to create functions that consistently return the same value, given the same
inputs. It does so by discouraging mutability in its language constructs, thus minimizing
side effects that can alter state from one call to the next.
Chris Smith's book Programming F# provides an introduction to and an overview of this
language. Because so many of the constructs are foreign, this book can be a bit overwhelming
- particularly Chapter 2, which quickly introduces many of the language constructs
of F#.
But Smith brings it together after pushing through the language details. He goes through
the basics of functional programming; then compares it to imperative programming,
showing how you can implement either style using F#. He follows with a discussion
of object-oriented programming and its relevance to F# (it is a key to allowing F#
programs to interact with programs written in other .Net languages).
The book is filled with examples to illustrate the points made. If you are new to
F#, Programming F# is a good book to get you started with the language.
I had every intention of going to more sessions at the Central Ohio Day of .Net. But one speaker was sick and I was asked to fill in with a second session. So I spent time after lunch preparing and only saw bits and pieces of other sessions.
But I did learn a lot. This conference always attracts smart people and I exchanged ideas on unit testing, code refactoring, Visual Studio 2010 new features and web hypermedia. Many of these conversations took place on camera, so I will be able to share them online in the coming weeks.
And I delivered presentations on ASP.Net MVC (scheduled) and Managed Extensibility
Framework (unscheduled).
Many thanks to Mike Wood and the rest of the crew that put on this excellent conference.
In this Grok Talk, I describe the importance of ASP.Net MVC and walk the viewer through building a simple application using this framework.
Episode 91
Matt Van Horn and I began by talking about Expression Blend and the conversation moved toward collaborations between developers and designers
Episode 90
BizSpark and WebsiteSpark are low-cost software options that Microsoft offers to startup companies. In this interview, Microsoft Partner Evangelist John McClelland describes these programs.
This is a 5-part recording of Chris Marinos's excellent presentation F# and Functional Programming for C# Developers, delivered at the May 19 meeting of the Great Lakes Area .Net User Group (GANG)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Episode 89
In this interview, Dane Morgridege describes the Entity Framework - an object relational mapping tool from Microsoft.
What I like about Paul Kimmel's LINQ Unleashed for C# is that he does not rush into explaining LINQ. Before explaining LINQ, Kimmel explains the new technologies that make LINQ possible.
He walks the reader through anonymous types, type initialization, extension methods, the yield return statement, lambda expressions, and closures - all features that were introduced in C#3.0 - before explaining how each of these features makes LINQ possible.
After building up to it, Kimmel steps through the syntax of LINQ, providing numerous code examples.
He begins with syntax to all implementations of LINQ; then dives into more detail about the major LINQ implementations: LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects, and LINQ to XML. In each section, he provides numerous helpful samples.
When I first opened this book, I was new to LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and had no grasp of how it works. This book got me up to speed. I recommend it for anyone learning LINQ.
As someone who once passed a bunch of tests (>40) to earn a bunch of Microsoft certifications(>20), I'm sometimes asked about the value of these certifications. Are they worth the time, cost and effort they take? What are the benefits? Who benefits most?
The real cost of certifications
More than the cost to sit the exam (typically $150) is the cost of studying
for the exam. I used to spend weeks - at least a couple hours each day - studying
for each exam. This cost tends to far outweigh the exam fee.
What do certifications prove?
A certification demonstrates a minimal level of competence in a given technology.
They don't flag the holder as an expert; but, assuming you didn't cheat, they require
knowledge of the subject matter in order to pass.
Everybody learns differently
I hope all of us can agree that it is not possible to succeed as a software
developer, network engineer or database administrator without learning new skills
every year. Each of us learns in a different way. I think most people learn a technology
best when they have something to apply it to. This application serves as motivation
to learn and retain knowledge. If your job doesn't provide that application, you need
to create it yourself. This might be a personal or open source project or it might
be a certification exam. Either way, if it helps you to learn a new skill by focusing
on a tangible goal, that is a good thing.
When are certifications most valuable?
Certification is no substitute for experience, but it can help to supplement
experience. This is especially true early in your career when practical experience
is lacking. For those new to information technology or software development, it can
be difficult to build up the experience necessary to impress a potential employer.
A certification can help make up for a lack of experience, because you have demonstrated
the ability to complete a goal and enough knowledge to pass an exam.
Some places require certification. Why?
Microsoft partners with companies in different ways. In some of these partnership
arrangements, the partner company must have a certain percentage of their employees
certified in Microsoft technology. Although far from perfect, it's a very simple way
for Microsoft to vet their partners.
So is it worth it?
From a personal standpoint, I don't at all regret achieving the certifications
that I did. I took most of the exams early in my career and they gained me some credibility.
As recent as two years ago, potential employers asked me about my certification and
were impressed when I provided it. I have learned a lot studying for these exams and
that knowledge has helped my career. I doubt that I'll be taking many more exams.
My free time is limited and I prefer to use more efficient ways to learn, focusing
on building applications or preparing and delivering presentations.
My advice is to consider certifications early in your career to improve your skills and improve your credibility; then spend your time elsewhere as you solidify your credibility.