The Museum Of Modern Thinking

Not existential angst, but wondering where I need to position myself as a developer. I’ve missed out on some technologies, and I’m wondering how far down the rabbit hole I should go with some of them.

I’m still very much a web developer, so I certainly should be looking at ASP.Net MVC and jQuery, as well as upgrading my knowledge in the standard Web Forms, not forgetting the AJAX toolkit as well. Behind the scenes, looking at data storage layers such as LINQ to SQL and their enterprise patter, as well as applicable patterns such as the Repository Pattern and even the Active Record pattern.

That’s where things get, frankly, a bit dull and convoluted. I read a great post recently about how coding these days is how to link one library to another, or just whack some XML together to control a Spring.Net DI solution. I, like the author, can’t find the fun in that. Sure, it may get projects done quicker, and it’s standard, but it can also be a lot of overkill. That’s why I’d prefer a simple approach to projects, nice and lightweight, no navel-gazing about what might be required two years down the line, not coding an interface for every single class because “it’s the right thing to do” although it’ll never be used, adding tests to every single method (even private ones) because “it’s the right thing to do”, etc.

I’m a firm believer in Jeff Attwood’s mantra YAGNI – you ain’t gonna need it. If the customer hasn’t asked for it, and if there’s no chance it will be required within a year or so, don’t code it. Write your code in such a way that things can be replaced easily (and yes, I guess that does mean some interfaces, but surely not on every single bloody class), and keep it simple. I use as many syntactical shortcuts as I can, as I’m lazy, but that’s why they were added to the language.

Anyway, a bit off topic – I’m really writing this as a store for where I should be heading. I am a Microsoft chap, and I enjoy the products they put out and their technoology approaches. I find it amusing when I suggest a Microsoft solution (such as ASP.Net’s Forms Authentication) and am told by a colleague that he’ll write it themselves – how many people does Microsoft employ to work on stuff like this? How much R&D do they do? And one person thinks they can do it better? Heh, it’s another contradiction, I guess – I said I don’t like merely linking up one library with another, but I guess you could say that’s all I’m doing with the Forms Authentication, but hey, it’s sometimes a pain to get right and it’s fun wreslting with it BUT it provides a hell of a lot out of the box…

And don’t get me started on form validation – “oh, we don’t use the validation controls because they don’t work”. Yeah, ok, I’ve used them countless times and they seem just dandy.

Gah, back on topic. I really should be looking at what’s new in Windows Forms and the top best practices in that area as well, and look at Silverlight as well.

Hmmm, lots to cover – I’d better get started…

Do I really need to add anything else?

Although it’s embedded, I thoroughly recommend heading over to You Tube and watching in in HD – just click on the video above and select HD…

And damn, love that “suit in a briefcase” from the comics