Maggie++

CodeMash has opened up applications for speakers and sponsors for the 2010 event that will take place January 13-15 in Sandusky, Ohio.

CodeMash is the best developer conference in the region and is the only conference that is open to all types of development languages, platforms and processes. They are again having the pre-compiler day of workshops that began this year and was a huge success. This is a day full of in-depth workshops where developers can really dig in and learn something new.

Keep on the lookout for when registration opens as it will surely fill up quickly.

There has been much talk lately about developing software, learning software, skill levels, drag and drop demos and what is Microsoft’s responsibility to the .Net community.

I don’t think Microsoft is responsible for developers’ knowledge or programming skill level. They create tools that can be used for development. That is all we need from them. There are other tools and languages to use and there will be many more in the future.

I think some of the responsibility of quality software development lies with the companies that hire developers for development. You get what you pay for. Companies need to hire talent and provide resources for those developers to continue to learn. Software evolves as does other technologies. Continuous Improvement is not just a buzz word. It does not happen on its own; it takes leadership. It is also vital for the software community to take responsibility for building a better community.

If a developer writes an application by drag and drop that produces code that is un maintainable who is at fault? Have they been taught another way? Are there expectations of design for maintainability? Have they ever had to maintain code another has written? Should Microsoft have warned them in a sales demo that that it might not be the best way to write code? Has someone reviewed the code and the design? Have they been provided the necessary resources to perform their job? Do they have someone to ask how to make it better?

Writing good software is hard. It is not a job for beginners. Microsoft provides the languages, compilers and tools used to write .Net code. If a developer does not know how to write code and isn’t being taught how to do it better they are not really developing software and they certainly aren’t going to become expert or master at their craft.

Anyone can throw flour, salt, sugar , yeast and water into a pan and put it in an oven. It will not become bread unless they followed a good process and knew what it takes to make a good loaf of bread. Often they will have been taught by someone else to bake bread or they will have spent considerable time experimenting until they get it right. They do not go to the appliance store for a salesperson to demonstrate the oven’s new and shiny features to make better bread.

We are becoming a more drag and drop society. I can throw a frozen bag of vegetables into the microwave push a button and have hot steaming vegetables to serve. I did not have to select quality vegetables from the store. I did not need to know how to wash them or that I should and why. I did not have to know how to trim them and prepare them for cooking. I didn’t even need to get a pan dirty.

Software has not reached this level of maturity. I need to understand the details and syntax of the programming language. I need to know how to interface with the operating system. I need to know what the operating system is capable of. I need to know what functions the framework provides and how to make good use of them. I need to understand how to communicate with all other software I need to interact with. I need to know all of this in addition to learning the application domain and what the software is supposed to do.

Software development techniques do need to mature – it should be easier to put a system together. We should not have to spend so much time reinventing the wheel and writing plumbing code. There needs to be a better way to find out what components are available and when they should be used. If we need to buy controls from several different venders to build the best software in an efficient and timely manner then we should be able to and given a means to do so.

My husband is an RF design engineer. He designs all sorts of radio devices and components that go into larger systems. If he had to design every chip, filter and capacitor anew for each project he would not get anything built. He spends considerable time modeling the interaction of these parts on the computer before he decides what will go on the boards and how they should be arranged. He then builds up a prototype and tests it’s functionality. Often things do not work they way they should; there are stray signals and what not (not my domain to explain well) interfering with the functionality. It is a highly iterative process – he goes back and forth between modeling and design and testing in the lab many many times to get it right. He tries many parts out; some are rejected – sometimes they do not make the specs they are designed for in the environment he places them in. Is this the fault of the part designer? No, they can’t possibly imagine every situation where their parts may end up. It just means he needs to change the design to make the part work or find a new part.

He has spent dozens of years becoming an expert in his field. He had mentors from the very beginning guiding him. He cooped during college to get vital real-world experience. He now makes sure to bring in coops to work with him as he knows this is how good engineers will be grown. Yes it takes time away from his work but it is important. He knows that they will not learn in school all that they will need to be successful. He does not expect an engineer with just a few years experience to be able to produce a good product on their own. It takes time to nurture and develop talent.

What will the software community do to find, nurture and develop talent?

Maggie++

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I am still me. Yesterday I decided to change my Twitter handle to my real name. I have always had my real name and photo on my profile. The biggest reason is that my employer is starting a large initiative to increase social networking and asked for twitter names being currently used. I was about to hit send with the reply using 'MaggiePlusPlus' when I thought that it sounded a little bit silly and people that already new me at work wouldn't recognize it.

I am still using MaggiePlusPlus on my blog and on most other social networking sites. I hope I don't confuse too many people.

You can still call my husband 'Mr PlusPlus' as I think that sounds cute:)

maggie++

“Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements. “

Suw Charman-Anderson, a freelance social software consultant in the UK established this day by pledging to blog about  women in technology if at least 1000 people joined her..

“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

She points out that research shows that women need female role models and wants us to take part by acknowledging women in technology in our lives.

As a female Software Engineer I have had many women inspire me throughout my career including:

• Colleen Berg
• Anita Borg, founder of Systers
• Carolyn K., founder of Hoagies Gifted
• Suzanne LaChapelle, founder of The Women’s Circuit
• Dianne Marsh
• Jennifer Marsman

I wish to thank them for their inspiration to me and others.

You can follow FindingAda on Twitter and use #ALD09 to find more information today.

maggie++

The Central Ohio Day of .Net is approaching. The organizers are busy choosing speakers and making plans. Submit a talk by March 2 if you have something to share. Be on the look out for registration to open next month and sign up quickly as I’m sure it will fill up fast.

This is an event you will not want to miss. The day is all about community, learning and new ideas. 2008’s event changed my life.  I  had been to numerous code camps in the area and had been a regular attendee of the Cincinnati .Net Users Group.  But I pretty much kept to my self and talked to the few people I knew at the time. 

Here is a summary of the sessions I attended last year along with links to the slide decks for more information. 

I first sat in Joe O’Brien’s talk on Why Ruby and initially felt left out because everyone in the room seemed to know each other, they were twittering and many made big deals (jokingly) about having Macs at a .Net event.  [aside:  I do not understand all of the mac / pc sparring, browser wars and fights over who’s text editor is the best thing since sliced bread.  Lighten up, they are all just tools, it’s the brains that matter ;)]  That faded away as Joe sparked my interest in Ruby.  I had been introduced to Ruby by Jim Weirich several years prior at the Cincinnati Programmers Guild.  At that time it looked like a fun scripting language to easily make tools.  Now Joe was showing how much Ruby had grown and you could build all sorts of things including web applications. He even started his own company to develop Ruby applications and more.

F# It! was presented by Amanda Laucher and James Bender.  Amanda explained twitter so that “I got it” [I signed up later that day and Amanda was the first one I followed]  Then she and James introduced me to functional languages and F#.  I was fascinated and quickly shared their enthusiasm for this ‘new’ way of thinking.

Intro to Boo and DSL by Jay Wren introduced me to domain specific languages.  Intro to WCF by Dan Rigsby and Reliable Messaging in WCF by James Bender provided good insight into what WCF is and how I might use it.  The day ended up with Well, Isn't that Spatial by Jason Follas which introduced location data enhancements to  SQL Server 2008.

Last year at the CODODN is when I was first exposed to Twitter and I became part of the Twitter Tribe.  Since then I have attended similar events in OH, TN, TN, KY, IN and OH.  Each time I expand my learning about software development and my network of fellow developers.  As a result I have greatly expanded the blogs I read, the podcasts I listen to and the books that I read.  I even started my own blog. I have also come out of my shell and go out of my way to talk to and meet other consultants at work and have become more connected to the developers at the local .Net Users Group.

I am anticipating a diverse set of sessions to choose from on April 18th and am looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.

maggie++

Take a minute and add the CodeMash logo to your twitter picture to let everyone know you will be at CodeMash.  It will give you something to do while you are waiting and if everyone adds it - you will know all of the awesome devs you will meet there next week.

The simplest way I found is to use Paint.NET and add the logo as a layer to your picture.

What are you waiting for?

maggie++

CodeMash  will be in three short weeks. Tomorrow (12/17/2008) is the last day to reserve rooms with the discount rate  at the Kalahari resort.  If you have not registered, what is holding you back?

The session details have been posted and I have tried to plan out which talks I may attend.  This is proving to be very difficult.  If I were Hermione I would be able to wear a Time-Turner to get the most from CodeMash. Hermione Granger is a classmate of Harry Potter.  During the third school year at Hogwarts, Hermione uses a Time-Turner to set time back an hour so she can attend simultaneous classes and maximize her learning.  A Time-Turner is a magical device invented by J. K. Rowling for the book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

If I were Hermione then I would use this time travel device to attend simultaneous sessions at CodeMash.  Here is the list of CodeMash sessions as they stand today.  I have highlighted the sessions I am most likely to attend.  I would also like to be able to attend all of the Open Space sessions as I know much valuable discussion will take place. Time travel would certainly make it easier to choose sessions, but would probably be exhausting as well.

What strategies are you going to use to get the most out of CodeMash? 

Wednesday:

Full-Day
CodeJam: Gary Bernhardt, Sarah Dutkiewicz, Joe Fiorini, Corey Haines, John Stockton
.NET 101 With Jeff Blankenburg and Josh Holmes
Java, Groovy, and Grails 101

AM
iPhone Development 101
Test-driven Development 101 With Leon Gersing
Turning the Ship With Dave Donaldson

PM
Kanban 101
iPhone Development 101
Test-driven Development 101 With Phil Japikse
Value Stream Mapping Workshop With Mary Poppendieck

Thursday

8:15am to 9:30am
KEYNOTE #1: Eric Meyer: JavaScript Will Save Us All

9:45am to 10:45am
Dynamic Hyper-Video in Silverlight (Jesse Liberty)
Introducing Agile for Real World Programmers (Greg Huber)
Programming in Scala (Venkat Subramanian)
Introducing the iPhone SDK (Chris Adamson)
Introducing the Live Mesh SDK (Jeff Blankenburg)
Adobe Flex Fundamentals (TBA)

11am to 12pm
Re-thinking UI: WPF Data Templates (Carey Payette)
Three Tips to Improve Your Dev Process (Jim Holmes)
Introducing Prototype and Scriptaculous (Leon Gersing)
Developing JoeMetric for the iPhone (Joe O'Brien)
Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy (Sarah Dutkiewicz)
Developing for the Microsoft Surface (Jennifer Marsman)
Dynamic Languages and the JVM (Nathaniel Schutta)

12:15pm to 1:30pm
LUNCH + KEYNOTE #2: Venkat Subramanian: Pointy-Haired Bosses and Pragmatic Programmers—Facts and Fallacies of Everyday Software Development

1:45pm to 2:45pm
Scaling Habits of ASP.NET Applications (Richard Campbell)
Thrashing (Mary Poppendieck)
Erlang: The Basics (Kevin Smith)
Groovy/Grails for non-Java Developers (Mike Kimsal)
Python Data Visualization and Imaging (Zach Steindler)
Well, Isn't that Spatial (SQL Server Spatial Data) (Jason Follas)
Adobe Flex with MVC Frameworks (Robert O'Malley)

3:35pm to 4:35pm
Demystifying Windows Communications Foundation (Keith Elder)
Soft Skillz (Brian Prince)
Managed Extensibility Framework (Drew Robbins)
IPhone Web Development with Grails (Chris Judd)
Practical Scala (Dianne Marsh)
What? Threads Are Hard? (Jim Weirich)
Functional Concepts for OOP Developers (Bryan Weber)

4:50pm to 5:50pm
Modeling Types with Extension Methods (Bill Wagner)
CI: More than just a toolset (Jay Harris)
Griffon in Front, Grails in Back (Jim Shingler)
Ruby Desktop Application Framework (Lance Carlson)
Microsoft Virtual Earth, Now in 3D! (Aydin Akcasu)
Drupal at Zattoo: A Case Study (Chris Cassell)

Friday
8:15am to 9:30am
KEYNOTE #3: Mads Torgersen: One Big Happy Family – Where are the Managed .NET Programming Languages Heading?

9:45am to 10:45am
Dev Guide: Skinning Silverlight Controls (Jesse Liberty)
Practices of an Agile Developer (Venkat Subramanian)
Grease, a Parallel Systems Architecture (Vielmetti)
Testing Rails (Joe O'Brien)
JVM Scripting with Jython (Mark Ramm)
Test Infecting the Legacy Organization (Nathaniel Schutta)
IronRuby in the Real World (Michael Letterle)

11am to 12pm
Guerilla SOA for WCF (Joshua Graham)
Language-Oriented DDD (David Laribee)
Networking and Communications in Silverlight (John Stockton)
Cool Stuff with Computer Vision (Scott Preston)
Rich Apps with Groovy Swingbuilder (Andres Almiray)

1:45pm to 2:45pm
Deep LINQ: C# Query Expression Pattern (Bill Wagner)
Improving Web Application Performance and Stability (Steve Smith)
Spring 2.5 MVC (Ken Sipe)
Actor Concurrency (Alex Miller)
Introducing BazaarNG (Mike Woelmer and Jay Wren)
A Look Inside Microsoft Labs: Photosynth, Deep Zoom, Live Mesh, and More (Jeff Blankenburg)
A Programmer's Guide to User Experience (Josh Walsh)

3:30pm to 4:30pm
Multi-threading Mojo with F# (Dustin Campbell)
Executable Documentation with easyb (Andrew Glover)
Cloud Computing with .NET (Wesley Faler)
Modern Web Applications with .NET (Drew Robbins)
Ruby Isn't Just About Rails (Adam Wiggins)
Reverse Engineering Applications (Joe Kuemerle)

maggie++

There are several posts (e.g. Joel’s here and Jeremy’s here) about the new SharePoint Master Certification and the debate over it reinforces my decision to stop pursuing SharePoint at the present time. 

So, this blog post is about my brief dive into all that is SharePoint.  A little history:  I became a consultant early last year and one focus was going to be learning SharePoint.  I ended up being assigned to a C++ unmanaged project (a whole different story) and dove into learning C++, MFC, ATL and COM instead.

When I became ATO (at-the office or on-the-bench) this summer, I took the time to pick up SharePoint.  I began attending all of the sessions (at code camps such as CodeStock, devLink, and IndyTechFest) that I could to learn from SharePoint MVPs.  I read many books, listened to podcasts, did hands-on-labs and watched many training webcasts.

Since I have a background in Document Management and Imaging and a huge interest in search, libraries (book kind) and improving user interactions, I really liked what I saw.  I saw SharePoint as a good platform to further my development skills as well as bring the information architecture into the fold.

I studied and passed the Moss application development exam and wrote a few connectible web parts to help out colleagues.   I did not pursue configuration exams since I did not want to be pegged an IT/Infrastructure person (since I’m not).  The more I talked to consultants doing SharePoint locally, the more it became apparent that there is little custom development at the current time (at my employer and location) and that much infrastructure knowledge is needed.  In order to excel at this type of job, I would need to work with an experienced team for some time to develop those skills.  Something a client would not be willing to pay for.

As I love software much more than hardware,  I decided that SharePoint was not where I wanted to be at this time since I would rather be learning advanced development (patterns, AOOP, TDD) and upcoming technologies (WCF, Linq, WF, WPF) with my time.

I am now working for a client on YACPPP (yet another C++ project).  I am just getting started but have been told the code base is well designed in a OOP type of way – so I am anxious to learn how it is architected, see the code  and dive back into C++ (there is much new (for me) to learn in this older technology) .  On the side I am going to learn how to be a better developer in the other areas mentioned.

So SharePoint is out of my thoughts for now, possibly in the future I’ll attack it again when I can from a development angle.  The best part about SharePoint is the community.  I am astonished at the hundreds of SharePoint bloggers working to share what they have learned and the passion I see many have around SharePoint.   All of the SP experts I have met, such as Rob Bogue, Doug Ware, and Rob Foster have been great and  I will keep my eye out on twitter to follow the SharePoint (r) evolution.

maggie++

Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research. But to be clear, raising money isn’t the primary purpose of this web event. The hope is that you turn your site pink (in whatever way works for your site), educate yourself about the multiple issues related to Breast Cancer, then take that knowledge and tell someone else what you’ve learned.

There are many styles of interviewing software developers.  The best processes are those that allow you to see if the candidate is a good fit for your organization and for the candidate to see if your company is a good fit for them.  Shortcomings on either side can lead to costly mistakes and wasted time on both sides.

When I worked on the GSM switch project at Motorola in the late 80s we spent considerable time recruiting software engineers.  Our process was typically:

• one engineer would escort candidate from HR to the office area giving a short tour on the way.
• manager would briefly talk with them and explain the project at a high level and the day’s schedule.
• depending on candidate’s level and on our availability 2-4 engineers would individually give technical interviews.
• one interview would include lunch out in a local restaurant.
• the manager would meet with them again for any follow-up questions and to inquire which part of the system they were interested in before they were escorted back to HR.

My interview technique was to first have them explain their previous projects and I asked questions where I needed clarification.  Then I would draw a high level architecture diagram of my subsystem and explain how it fit into the product and its purpose.  I would let them lead at this point; I was looking for them to show an interest and curiosity about the system by asking questions and an aptitude for talking about a system from both a high level and a detailed level.  I was looking for inquisitive thinkers who seemed eager to learn and work on a team.

 The candidates did not usually have nor did we expect them to have any telephony experience or knowledge of cellular (analog or digital) phone networks.   Most did not know C or assembler nor had heard about the object oriented concepts we were designing with.  These were important, but at the time software engineering was all about design and process and not at all about the underlying technology.  In fact we did not know ourselves at the beginning if we would be using C++ or C.  Our previous phone switches were coded with assembler.  We ended up using C as the C++ cross-compilers were not proven for our processors at the time and would have been an unnecessary risk.

This process consumed much time but we ended up with an outstanding group of software engineers.

Two podcasts I’ve listened to this past week have had content on more recent interview practices.  First was Episode 16: Interviewing Software Developers from Herding Code.   From the show notes:

This week Kevin leads a discussion on interviewing software developers:

• What interview styles we find effective
• What sort of questions actually help us evaluate a candidate
• Why API trivia and puzzle questions don’t work
• Hiring mistakes we’ve made based on errors in our interview style
• Why we don’t do very well when the tables are turned and it’s our turn to be interviewed"