Daily Archives: March 9, 2009

Why I now Twitter?

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There are a million reasons someone might start using Twitter. For the longest time, I stayed away from it. Now I am a fairly active Tweet’er. Why you might ask?

I was the outsider.

I know, I am a wuss. I am fine with it. Cameron and Pat finally convinced me I was missing out on something big, and I was.

I signed up, and started Twittaling. To my surprise, I started liking it. In a few hours, I was able to quickly start joining groups (or Tribes as Seth Godin would call them). Interaction within these groups is why I am now a believer. For example, I already blogged about attending Code Camp. I mentioned something huge in that post.

Through Code Camp, blogging, and Twitter I have joined a community of developers much larger than Mailtrust’s.

I am now actively participating in a new group after this weekend. If all the presenters just had blogs (which many of them did), I don’t think this would have happened. Why? Because most people don’t blog often. And second, when people do write something it is usually a few minute committment to read.

I blog to teach and learn.

I Twitter to participate.

Don’t worry though. I love blogging, and still plan on blogging the same amount. Where blogging lacks in interaction, it has much richer content. I can’t learn what DDD is on Twitter. I can by reading some good blogs.

Re: Roanoke Code Camp

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I attended my first Code Camp this past weekend. Overall, it was a great experience, although for a few reasons you might not expect. I learned a little about new .NET features, but the biggest benefit for me was the networking. My code community, for the most part, revolves around Mailtrust. Through Code Camp, blogging, and Twitter (I will blog on this later, since you might remember my last Twitter post) I have joined a community of developers much larger than Mailtrust’s.

This is a good thing.

With that being said, I did really enjoy learning a few things.

  • WPF is pretty wild, especially with Blend. Let designers design interfaces directly, and developers just make it work. This isn’t the first time this concept has been tried out, but it works pretty damn well from what I saw.
  • .NET 4.0 – Oh ya. I loved that stuff. Learning about dynamic, DLR, and language enhancements is my crack.
  • PEX and Code Contracts – Good concepts (but some things I didn’t like)

What could be improved on?

  • Don’t shun open source. NHibernate and NUnit are great tools, and we shouldn’t ignore them because Microsoft is competing with them ( Entity Framework and Unit Testing Framework).
  • More code. Powerpoint should be banned.
  • Don’t trivialize the importance of good testing. Pex is really an amazing concept, that can complement testing, not supplement (Yes, I love trig).

It was a great experience though. I am looking forward to more RVNUG involvement, as well as my next Code Camp.