Time constraints on user group meetings

I attended the CMAP meeting last night -- and left early. This was unusual for me. I have attended CMAP meetings for somewhat more than two years, and I have consistently stayed at meetings until their ends. The last event of the meeting is a raffle of prizes.

Last night I made the decision to leave early. I had arrived slightly early to chat with people at the meeting, which for me is the most important part of the meeting. With other tasks pressing on my schedule, I had to leave before the end of the meeting.

The presentation was on Microsoft's MVC Scaffolding, a set of assistants for application development. The speaker knew his material and presented it well. I have no complaint about the material, except perhaps that it doesn't apply to my current assignment.

Agile Development presentation at CMAP

The CMAP group had a presentation on agile development techniques. For those familiar with agile development techniques, there were no surprises.

The key ideas from the presentation:

- Software development uses the metaphors of building construction, which serve us poorly. Software development is similar to a journey of exploration, not building a well-defined thing.

- The "big design up front" approach fails not from lack of planning or poor planning skills, but from our inability to predict the future. Project plans do not account for every possible event -- and never will.

- Allow for change and respond to it

- Revise the plan as you gain information

- Build features of the system, not layers. You can build a feature in layers, but the objective is to build the feature.

- Use feedback loops to ensure that you progress towards your goals

- Agile techniques are not tied to specific development tools

I was happy to see the CMAP group (a Microsoft-centered technology group) look at agile development.

.NET meeting

I attended the CMAP meeting tonight. The presentation was a group of speakers talking about tips for .NET development. The major topics were jQuery, an Extension loader for Visual Studio, and Silverlight. More interesting were the side conversations with people. One convo was about the format of XLS and XLSX files!

Microsoft WebMatrix

I attended the CMAP (Central Maryland Association of .NET Professionals) tonight. The presentation was on Microsoft's new "WebMatrix" development tool, a low-end web page/app editor/builder.

WebMatrix is pretty nice, for what it does. The description "low-end app builder" is perhaps not quite accurate, nor is "high-powered HTML editor". WebMatrix is an IDE and a set of libraries that sit on top of .NET, run under IIS, and serve dynamic web pages. You can program web pages with this funny little language (like PHP or ASP or JSP) and get results pretty quickly. I got a lot out of the presentation.

I also chatted with a bunch of folks, including my friend Ben who wants to attend ShmooCon. Apparently the tickets have already sold out, and he missed the small window.

And bonuses: I picked up a copy of a book on IronRuby (the .NET implementation from Microsoft) and a USB memory stick with Microsoft Windows Phone stuff on it.

All in all, a good evening.

Professional meeting, Microsoft, and networking

I attended the CMAP meeting last night. I chatted with some folks before the meeting started, and listened to the presentation on Microsoft's "Entity Framework 4". (The previous version was Entity Framework 1"; Microsoft changed to version 4 to match the version number of C# and .NET Framework.

The presentation went at a slow pace, and gave me some time to think about the Baltimore Beehive, the local co-working location. If I get the opportunity to work there (say, one day every other week) I would need a PC. My trusty IBM ThinkPad just died, so it won't be that one. I could replace is, or I could use the Apple MacBook. Or, I could get a tablet, although I think a computer with a keyboard would be better for coding.

A day at the Beehive would also give me the opportunity to network with other folks, perhaps at lunchtime meetings.

Another geek meeting

I attended the CALUG meeting tonight. It made an interesting contrast to the CMAP meeting of last night. The CMAP meetings are a bit more organized (structured) and presentations are a bit more formal. CALUG tends towards the informal end of the spectrum.

CMAP and CALUG both offer attendees free pizza and soda. I find CALUG's pizza a bit more digestible, but that may simply be due to different vendors. (CMAP uses Papa John and CALUG uses a local shop.)

I find the folks at CALUG more approachable. It's easier to start conversations. The conversations are generally deeper and more meaningful. Folks at CALUG focus on the art of programming (or sysadmin-ing, or management) and folks at CMAP focus more on careers. Well, the 'P' in CMAP stands for 'professionals' so perhaps a professional is one who keeps his career in mind.

The CALUG meeting had a presentation on GNU Screens and Byobu. GNU Screens lets you multiplex a terminal session, and byobu lets you manage the configuration. A "repeat" talk, but still interesting.

More interesting were the side conversations. One with a Tenable employee about talent, management, and angry drivers. We also chatted about Agile Development techniques and their advantages over "Big Design Up Front". Another conversation was with some DP veterans (I say "DP" because in their day that's what it was called) about the Ada programming language, DVD players, lucky finds, and early personal computers such as the Commodore PET and the Radio Shack TRS-80 model I.