December 13, 2007

December Philly ALT.NET Meeting Recap

by Brian Donahue

Tonight was our 2nd Philly ALT.NET meeting and we experimented with an Open Spaces format.  The crowd was significantly smaller this time, only 9 people, which I attribute to a combination of me having less time in the last month to promote, the crappy weather, and possible discomfort, confusion, or just plain disinterest in not having a set topic. 

That said, the meeting was a lot of fun, and there was some great conversation.  We used the voting game "35" to pick two topics.  The process involves everyone writing a topic they are interested in on an index card, then you shuffle around and trade cards over and over and then stop next to someone else and partner up.  Each pair gets 7 points to split between the two topics they are holding, based on their interest in each topic.  You repeat the process 5 times (get it?  5 * 7 = 35) and then you count up the votes.  We picked the top two topics and split the meeting roughly in half.  Here were the topics suggested, and the vote tallies:

1. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) - 3 people suggested this topic, so it ended up with  52 total votes
2. Microsoft Responses and Alternatives to ALT.NET - 27 votes
3. Object Relational Mapping (ORM): Alternatives - 2 cards, 24 votes
4. Functional/Integration/Acceptance Testing - 17 votes
5. Agile Development and Refactoring Databases - 12 votes
6. Using Beta/EAP/CTP Software for Client Work - 4 votes

So our first discussion focused on BDD, the subtle differences compared to common TDD practices, and the perceived benefits.  My prior blog post came in handy for some code samples to compare.  For those who were there and were interested in the follow up posts I referenced:  there is some further thoughts on naming and syntax challenges with C#/NUnit, and then I basically just linked to JP Boodhoo's post with some great tips for organizing BDD tests in C#. 

Steve Eichert and I will be doing a session at Philly.NET Code Camp on BDD and TDD, and may elaborate at the ALT.NET meeting the following week (topic is not 100% decided yet).

The second discussion focused on how Microsoft has been responding to the ideas that spawned the ALT.NET movement, and the ALT.NET community itself.  Most of the conversation was about how great it was that things like ASP.NET MVC were coming out, and they seemed to be listening to their developer community a lot more, where they traditionally seemed to only care about corporate clients, and catering to the lowest common denominator of developers.  We discussed their tendency to compete/re-create existing OSS software, and agreed that if they continue to move in the direction of learning from the OSS world, and building on those ideas (e.g. ASP.NET MVC) rather than duplicating efforts and missing the mark (ObjectBuilder)  things will continue to improve.  We of course all agreed that a stronger Microsoft eco-system makes it more fun, and easier, to be a MS developer.

The topics that we didn't get to discuss all would make for interesting future conversations, and some will probably become future ALT.NET meetings.  In January we will get back to the pre-determined topic approach, but I hope we can maintain the same level of interaction and conversation.  We will definitely try more self-organizing meetings like this one in the future.