Advanced Pragmatism and ALT.NET
Filed Under Announcements, Human Factors
The ALT.NET conference was a fun and invigorating weekend of ongoing debate. All the discussions can be summarized with – It depends!
There is a shared perception that .NET and Agile communities will look for answers from this Open Space. Perhaps the greatest point of this conference – it wasn’t about coming to a consensus on a single ideal for the community. More importantly, we wanted to echo the question – Does this process, practice, or pattern work in this context? The answer – it depends.
A lot interesting topics raised a lot of interesting questions:
- Would I achieve better client communication or noise by practicing BDD?
- Why is the .NET community slower to adopt alternative development practices?
- Are anemic domain models a better implementation of DDD or is placing domain specific logic in entities more important?
- Why does Laribee think his pants hold magical Agile powers?
With such a high concentration of brilliant people and diversified experience there wasn’t a topic that didn’t have a opposing voice. In the end, the only answer we would agree on was – it depends. This is a refreshing message to contradict some of the voices in my head.
In short, this weekend was about passionate people learning from each other on how to become even more pragmatic. By debating different philosophies and tactics, we all walked away with a richer understanding of shared pains and possible solutions.
If you didn’t get a chance to attend, IglooCoder has a slew of great posts on a few of the different sessions:
- ALT.NET Day 1
- ALT.NET Day 2, Session 1 — Bringing the passion
- ALT.NET Day 2, Session 2 — BDD
- ALT.NET Day 2, Session 3 — MS MVC Preview
- ALT.NET Day 2, Session 4 — DDD
- ALT.NET Day 3, Session 1 — Getting the message out
- ALT.NET Day 3, Session 2 — Language Oriented Programming
Update: David Woods has a slew of good posts as well.
If you classify yourself as ALT.NET you will never find a better use of a weekend. Be sure to look out for the next and try to attend…and don’t forget your Agile pants.
4 Responses to “Advanced Pragmatism and ALT.NET”
[…] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt* ALT.NET Day 1 * ALT.NET Day 2, — Bringing the passion,BDD,MS MVC Preview, * ALT.NET Day 2, Session 4 — DDD * ALT.NET Day 3, Session 1 — Getting the message out * ALT.NET Day 3, Session 2 — Language Oriented Programming […]
Max, sometimes it seems that “it depends” is a frustrating non-answer that we hear too often from software developers. Sure, there may be a million ways to solve problem X, but shouldn’t we be trying to narrow it down to a single, consistent solution?
This reminds me of the the phrase “opinionated software” coined by the Rails community. The idea is that developers are going to choose one solution, and good or bad, it’s what everyone must use. The end result is more often good, because it keeps things simple and allows everyone to move on and concentrate on more interesting problems.
@Jason –
A single consistent solution is never the answer when 90% of our pain stems from communication breakdowns. How would you like it if I only spoke to you with a single ideal in one monotone voice – good or bad?
Some people choose to live with their pain until Microsoft (or some other large entity) proves without a doubt a new methodology works.
Others choose to be more proactive about it and seek options and experiment with them in different situations.
It is the latter of the two groups that invent the new ways of solving problems and are quicker to solve pain points. In the end, it is more cost effective to fail 10 times and come to a solution quicker than to pay the cost of pain for numerous years because you are fearful of change.
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