The NDC 2009 starts today and in lack of mobile technology content i have decided to go for more general topics than tech specific sessions.
Conference introduction
The conference opens at 8am with registration, and you have a hour to roam around before everything starts. Im looking at the exhibitions at Telenor Arena and must give kudos to the site, I like this place a lot better than last year at the SAS hotel.
At 8:45 the conference kicks off with a lot of noise, Hip Hop music and a short introduction by the director of Programutvikling AS. She introduces Robert C. Martin for his keynote, that starts with a lesson on biology and history and makes the transition over to software development and testing.
This speak should be force fed to mangers, not developers – it is not developers that are responsible for the lack of testing in the software industry – it is the mangers that does not for some unknown reason see the value in it. But then again, if we as developers just did it, just included the time it takes to do the tests in our estimates we just might get it to work, and your manager can give their own shoulder a pad and say that they thought their developers well..
Jump into WPF with Tim Huckaby
This was a introductory to WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation (level 100) and it is centered around WPF development, how getting it to work. The element of design patterns has been removed to make it easier to follow and understand. Sadly the “big screen” is way to small to actually see anything on the screen and if you are a bit to late to sessions and gets stuck quite high up you hear the other sessions as an annoying noise. From a mobile point of view it is useful to learn the principles of WPF because Silverlight is based on the principles of WPF, and coming to mobile in a hopeful near future.
32 ways to keep your blog from sucking by Scott Hanselman
This might be my opportunity to learn something about how to write a blog, get some insights on what to do better, and if not – Scott´s always fun to listen to. Here´s a few of the highlights and i am sure Hansleman will put the whole list on his blog.
- Tip: Expand acronyms not everyone knows what SEO stands for. help them understand, in this case Search Engine Optimization. This helps non-technical or even makes it easier for foreign language readers understand what you are talking about.
- Tip: Keep overtly personal information out of your tech blog. Remember that all the personal information you put in there is in no real use for your tech readers.
- Tip: Don`t apologize about not blogging enough. If you feel guilty about not blogging enough, maybe you should reconsider if you should have one or not.
- Tip: Don`t blog bile. Remember that the things you post is the things your future employer or partner will find while searching for your name on the net.
- Tip: If you are angry or upset and plan to do a blog post on it, write it, save it as a draft – re-read it the next day or week and reconsider posting or not.
- Tip: Avoid “excessive quoting”: Add value to the post, do not just re post another blog post. If you don´t add value you are closer to stealing.
- Tip: License your blog. Visit creative commons and pick a license. Express that your content can be used and distributed, but not changed and have your name attached.
- Tip: Make it easy to read. Most blog services has support for plugins or widgets and someone has written a plugin or skin for mobile devices. Use it.
Clean code by Robert C. Martin
After a short break, eating a ham and cheese sandwich it´s off to sit down and listen to unclebob talk about clean code. Not much to say about this except that you should READ THE BOOK! buy it at Amazon and dig in.
Zen of architecture by Joval Löwy
Wonder about architecture best practices, guidelines and pitfalls? Wonder how to design world–class systems? You understand the concepts but not how to apply them? The title and intro was more interesting than the session it self sadly. It should have been a bit more graphical. Most controversial statement in an architectural context was that “UML suck”. Think this session is something i have to dig into later when the video is released.
The Haacked and Hanselman show.
The HaaHa brothers.. Phil Haack and Scott Hanselman battle´s it out dev vs. hacker. The task is; the developer creates a banking or casino site and the evil black hat hacker show us what we need to think of when it comes to security considerations. Showing us how very easily a phishing attack is performed.
Design Sense Deep Lessons in Software Design by Michael Feathers
Agile software development has been a rediscovery of simplicity, but that simplicity arose out of considerable complexity. People spent years investigating the foundations of software, elucidating principles, and formulating patterns. In this session was about some of the deeper truths of software structure – ideas which underlay the principles and patterns and are not as well known today as they should be. Sadly it was late on the day and my head wasnt all in so i´ll have to watch it again when it comes out on video.
Summarize the day
This was my day 1 at the Norwegian Developer Conference and i liked it! Couple of small things i´d like to change, and that is to have a bit longer breaks between talks, and also make it possible to use the wireless headphones when sitting in front of the stage. Just ad another transmitter pointing towards the audience. When you´re stuck in a very popular session and sitting way high up you hear the sound from other sessions and “Livin´on a prayer” more than you hear your session
I so wish I was at NDC this year! awesome summary:) thanks