Part of my goals this year was to…in short, get a life. If you know me at all, you’d probably agree that one of the best words to describe me is: “workaholic.” Yes, I love what I do and I spend countless hours trying to master my craft. I like to go out and have a good time but most of my “down time” is spent working on some side project or learning some new technology/technique. I’ve been “off the radar” (so to speak) because I’ve accomplished my goal: Josh has had a life this summer.

The summer is quickly coming to an end and I’m probably on my way to falling back into my old habits, but I think I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had the chance to really step away from work and explore things that aren’t work-related (amazing concept, I know). I’d venture to say that I’ve been more enjoyable to be around at work and I’ve been doing my job a lot more efficiently because it’s no longer consuming me. This is nothing against my company, I willingly put in those hours. Well, used to at least.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the company, its culture, and bigger issues as well. I’ve been really thinking about this whole issue of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, the desire to better yourself, and the potential dangers of complacency. I’m not going to go into any of them right now but I think I’ll save them for some upcoming blog posts. Who knows, maybe I’ll even start updating more than once a month? (I’m not promising anything!)

Technorati Tags: 2009 adventures, reflections

Ryan and I have been going back and forth on Seesmic creating covers of songs and having some guitar fun. I thought I’d share a little with you here to prove that yes, I do find time to do things outside of work.

Technorati Tags: acoustic, acoustic covers, ben gibbard, couches in alleys, covers, music

Obviously I began with introducing myself and ProAce. Afterwards I went over the same basic presentation that I used for Austin Code Camp. I did elaborate on the examples, however, and gave a demonstration of a prototype of the application blocks that I have been ranting and raving about. I prototyped a Content Management System application block and gave a quick 5 minute example of how you could enable managed content in any MVC application. I will be following up with a post about this in my technical blog within the next few days.

The dialogue I had with the students regarding their careers, ProAce, and patterns was stimulating. We discussed implementation, the importance of patterns, and really just has a great back-and-forth about the reality of the industry. One of the more notable parts about this trip, however, was the wide variety of students that I met after the presentation. There was a large amount of interest in my company and I had the chance to meet a great number of prospective students. Very exciting!

I’m very grateful for my close relationship with the University and appreciate the opportunities they give me to speak and weigh in on important issues. I had a great time and was able to wrap up the final tasks with our enterprise project team (the primary focus of my visit).

For those of you that missed the presentation and would like to know what was covered, I will be doing a followup post very soon. Please check back for updates!

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Technorati Tags: neumont, presentation, proace, snapdragon, speaking, utah

Before I begin, I will note that I have been working with WebForms since the early days and have truly appreciated the rapid rate in which the platform allows you to develop certain applications (or pieces of applications).

The individual adoption of ASP.NET MVC is no easy thing, so it should come as no surprise that an organizational adoption of ASP.NET MVC is not a walk in the park. The WebForms platform does a great job at providing a set of Rapid Application Development tools to get your job done quickly and somewhat easily…depending on the task and the team you’re working with. When you begin running into rendering problems or third-party integration problems, a deeper understanding of the toolset is required and unfortunately most entry and junior-level developers just don’t have it.

Individual Adoption

The transition probably isn’t the same from one person to the next, but I can make some generalizations based on my personal experiences introducing the change and helping through various online communities. These generalizations have been mostly made by helping people transition as they tackle more real-life applications using MVC. As with any new technology, I strongly recommend the “Hello, World!” approach but not everybody agrees with me.

I wanna go fast!

The initial introduction to the concepts seems to go over quite well. You’re not sure if they understand it or just want to get their hands dirty by playing with it. They’re not sure if they understand it either…but it’s a new technology and they’re excited to get their hands dirty.

Where’d my magic go?

The first question is asked: “How do I access my <some control ID> control? It’s not showing up in intellisense.” Be careful here, you’re about to tell them everything they know about the web is a lie!  You carefully deliver the bad news and show them some examples of posting information.

So…I have to reinvent the wheel?

This is a question that I get a lot and it’s taken me a while to understand how to respond to it. Now, it may be different with every person but I’ve found that this question gets asked for a few reasons that all seem to boil down to this: the purpose of the ASP.NET MVC framework has not been properly explained and a proper comparison between MVC and WebForms has not been made. It should be clear that MVC is an alternative to WebForms (not a replacement) and that the entire development approach is different.

“But I could do this in like 5 minutes in WebForms!”

Sure, that might be true. In fact, your organization might not be suited for MVC development and this might be the right time for you to realize that. However, if you’re like me then you know that while the ramp up time might be a little rocky, it’s going to benefit you in the long run. So you explain the differences one more time and kindly ask them to just “give it a shot.”

Where’d my magic go? (Again)

“OK, so then how would I access my <some control ID> control?”

Even though you’ve explained it quite a few times by now, you’re bound to be asked again. In fact, don’t be too surprised if this continues to happen for quite some time.

As with the adoption of anything, you need a roadmap. You need clear goals and a vision to follow. The road is rocky at first and you’re going to need that vision to keep you moving.

Organizational Adoption

The damage has moved far past just affecting developers. I think an interesting shift in management’s understanding of .NET has happened in the past year or two. As management gets more technically savvy and buzzwords come and go, it’s more important than ever that management understands the goals of the roadmap you’ve set out. If you’re about to pitch using a new development approach that requires intense training and ramp up time then you’d be better be prepared for battle.

Sounds simple…right?

Let’s take a look at an application that is ideal for WebForms development. We need an application for internal-use only that will take in some input through a couple of data entry screens, run some basic calculations, and display the data in some sort of table. Sounds simple, right? It sure is. It’s so simple that I can write the steps out as follows:

1. Figure out what data needs to be entered and throw together a database
2. Create some pages and drag over some textboxes
3. Wire up the code and give it a test run
4. Drag over a grid view and wire it up

That’s all there is to it. There was no real need for design, no complex requirements, or any real thought needed to make this work. You’re happy because it took you about an hour and management is happy is also because it took you about an hour. There’s no need to discuss the details on what’s actually happening under the hood because it gets the job done and does it quite well.

Can’t you just drag and drop something?

We can create simple applications very quickly and effectively. This is where we have been for a long time and management has caught on to that. They’ve undoubtedly heard the term “control” get thrown around on more than one occasion and probably understood it to mean something quite different than what it really is. You see, WebForms does such a damn good job at simplifying things that you can’t blame them for thinking that a control is more powerful than it really is. Just think about the wide variety of controls that we have at our finger tips:

1. Simple textboxes
2. Login controls
3. Grid controls
4. Reporting controls
5. etc.

What’s my point?

We’ve created it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’ve built application after application and have done our best to incorporate testing as part of our daily routine but it hasn’t been easy. We’ve developed frameworks to help us test faster, but our budgets haven’t been fond of creating and/or maintaining those tests. ASP.NET MVC provides a brand new way of approaching development. We can finally incorporate Test Driven Development at the presentation-logic level and begin giving a higher level of transparency into the stability of our applications. It’s pretty clear why a lot of us are excited about this.

The pushback that we will be experiencing will come from two levels: developers and management. You will be dealing with real issues when developers pushback if they’re responding the way that I’ve mentioned here. MVC is so different than the world that WebForms created so it’s important to understand the sociological aspect of this situation. Management might not want to invest in testing, but I think it’s pretty easy to combat that one. It’s just important to think about it before making your pitch.

Technorati Tags: asp.net, asp.net mvc, career, change management, technology

If you’re wondering about the title of this post, a friend of mine and I were in a bit of a car wreck after leaving code camp today. It wasn’t anything too serious but unfortunately his car is a little banged up and I’m feeling pretty sore .

Anyway, I have attached the presentation for any one that is interested in looking over what was presented today.

SnapDragon Abstract:

A collection of tools, .NET classes, CSS classes, jQuery extensions, and other reusable application blocks that aim to minimize development overhead.

As illustrated in the attached presentation, we have future plans for growing the framework and involving the community in its development. I’m looking forward to releasing the current code base as Open Source within the next couple of weeks and reaching out to the community to get their feedback.

SnapDragon Framework FX (Download)

Technorati Tags: 2009 adventures, acc, austin code camp, conferences, proace, snapdragon, speaking

It’s 1:00am and I should definitely be in bed right now but I’m actually pretty excited for tomorrow morning. Not only is this my first time attending Austin Code Camp, I have the privilege of speaking on behalf of my company. I’m giving a presentation about our upcoming SnapDragon framework. I’m not sure if these sessions will be recorded, but I’ll be posting my material on here as a followup after tomorrow.

I know that I’ve promised to update more frequently…and I also know that I haven’t been doing that. I won’t make another promise of updating, but I’ll make a more conscious effort! Wish me luck

Technorati Tags: austin code camp, conference, proace, snapdragon, speaking

The critics were ranting and raving about how this will “refresh the franchise” and the previews made it pretty clear that they were targeting a brand new demographic. Personally, I thought that was going to end up hurting them in the long run. However, they somehow managed to find that perfect balance between backstory, trekkie-lingo, and some of the best action sequences I’ve seen in a long time. It was full of witty phrases that loyal fans will pick up but I think the rest of the humor definitely lends itself to new fans as well (case in point: my roommate).

I may not be the type to dress up and go to conventions…but I’ve definitely always been a Next Generation fan. My dad’s quite the fan and I’ll always remember hanging out watching good ol’ Patrick Stewart and all of their adventures. It was great to see a new facelift to the franchise =)

Technorati Tags: geeky, movies, star trek

We’ve been working on the social.proace project at work and it’s finally starting to take off. It’s funny, no matter how cliche it is, every initiative we make always follows that damn hype cycle:

Hype Cycle

(source: Wikipedia)

I’d like to think we’re at that lovely plateau, but I think we’re more into that slope of enlightment. There are some bugs to work out with our twitter integration and of course the random bugs here and there, but I think it’s coming together pretty nicely. Then of course there’s the whole issue of having content…so I’m going to have to stop being lazy and start writing some technical posts.

It’s not quite ready to link to yet, but I’ll give you a little preview:

social.proace

OK, I had planned to make a long post but I’m exhausted. I’m going to throw on some Arrested Development and The Office and head to bed.

Technorati Tags: proace, random, self-growth, social media

Sub-cultures tend to multiply at an astounding rate and the pastimes change so quickly that it makes my head spin. We have coping mechanisms for our inability to keep up: “It’s a trend,” “It’s a phase.”  Surely these are true, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re at least partially self-fulfilling prophecies.

I’m almost tempted to question my uniqueness in this world when someone greets me with some sort of gesture that I could’ve sworn I created. It’s mind boggling to consider the odds of both of us creating some new greeting and meeting each other. While it helps make this world feel a little smaller, it certainly does not help demystify the complexity of this universe we live in.

I think we drastically underestimate the complexity of our lives and the decisions that we make on a daily basis. I know this because my job is to model these decisions and automate them whenever possible. Believe me; you’d be surprised how much information is needed to make even a simple and objective decision.

Personally, I believe there’s a beauty in the art of modeling these complex decision making processes. The art and perhaps the underlying creative process is obviously vastly different than their traditional understanding, but it’s hard to argue the comparison when you’ve worked with some of the people I’ve had the privilege of assisting. Each of these individuals has had their own special way of approaching situations and creating the designs that help piece the puzzle together.

Problem solvers, designers, happy-hour groupies, and poets; I’m surrounded by representatives of so many of these sub-cultures and there are only 15 people in my immediate view. A man to my left is developing something in Java and the women to my right are blowing off some steam from what was obviously a tough week. No, I wasn’t eavesdropping; I believe the shots of tequila were a clear enough sign.

Some come for the atmosphere, some enjoy the company, and others just didn’t feel like sitting at home. Everybody here has their own take on the world and it’s always so different. I mention the obvious because sometimes I find myself wrapped up in my own world and I find myself spending my time modeling decisions instead of making them.  In fact, I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing that I get a little lost.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to strike up a conversation and say whatever’s on my mind. It’d probably go something like this:

I enjoy a nice cup of coffee, I spend too much time trying to understand everything, and someday I’ll grow up and be a little more grounded. What’s your story?

Technorati Tags: babbling, coffee, experimental, realizations, reflections, slightly lost