I will be talking about MVC and it’s environnement today at the OttawaCommunity.net in… Ottawa.

For those who attended, or about to attend, here are the slides that are going to be used:

The Slides

First of all, I’m extremely happy with my nomination as an ASP.NET MVP. I did a lot of presentations in the past 2 years and I’m happy that I’m considered for this award.

I would like to thank everyone who nominated me and helped me get where I am today.

Mario Cardinal helped me by backing me with the nomination. Éric De Carufel is also a big part of my nomination since we started a small group (ALT.NET) more than a year ago. Since then, we’ve been working non-stop in presenting and “one-upping” each other. I would also thank Joël Quimper for his help and my boss Yves Forget for helping me give time to those presentations.

Most of my presentations has been done at the .NET Montreal Group so I would lastly thank Guy Barette for the opportunities he gave me as well as the inclusion of our group inside the big .NET Montreal community.

So I’ll be participating more in the following months and I will push ASP.NET as hard as before within Montreal.

Thanks again,

-Maxime Rouiller

I've always found that the best practices inside my field were not always respected. Doctors always wash their hands, architect follow all the rules to have a building that is safe for the people living/working inside it. However, with software, anyone can improvise himself "Software Architect" or "Software Developer" without having any problem to find a job. Most people in the .NET community will follow what is given to them by Microsoft. Be it SharePoint, Entity Framework, Linq To SQL, Visual Studio, or whatever. Sometimes, alternative is good because they offer you a different view on the state of things.

When I met Greg Young for the first time, it was in .NET Montreal Community meeting where he was doing a presentation on DDD. We took a beer together and talked about improving the level of those in Montreal. Improving the level of average developer in Montreal is a hell of a task. First, there is people like me, Greg and Eric De Carufel who are passionate with their craft and are not satisfied with the status quo. We believe in ALT.NET but are most of the time called "passionate programmer". The people like me and Eric are the easy one to help. Then there is those that want to improve themselves but that doesn't have time (life, family, house, etc.). They are not easy to attract and the best way to instruct them is to do it internally (official training or coworkers). Then there are those that don't care about their craft. Those are of no interest to me.

When I took a beer with Greg Young, he talked about action on what would be needed to improve the level. That is the reason why I started (or at least... still trying) to start the ALT.NET Montreal Community. We started a month a ago. We were only 7 back then. It was small but friendly. Now, on June 25th, we will hold our second Coding Dojo of the ALT.NET Montreal Community.

What is important to remember when starting a community I think is, to start! So, if there is anyone from Montreal who wants to help us boot start a community... the ALT.NET Montreal Community, you are all welcome to our next Coding Dojo on June 25th.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an employee of DZone Inc. and I am not paid for talking about the RefCardz. RefCardz are available for Free (as in free beer) online on their website. RefCardz in printed format can be obtained at different events or by contacting DZone directly.

Maven Refcardz just got released today. Everybody that use Maven might be hyped over that but... did you know the other Refcardz?

My favourite is the "Design Patterns" Refcardz. There is easy diagram to understand the organization of your classes as well as 2 interesting sections. "Use When" contains indication on when to use this particular pattern and "Example" contains a small problem that would require this pattern. As an example, let's take the Adapter Pattern.

The "use when" in this section mention that an adapter should be used when:

• you need to adapt a class to your interface
• complex conditions with behaviour and states are present
• transitions between states need to be explicit

I didn't use the Adapter pattern a lot so I just knew about the first two. Still thinking about the third one.

Those RefCardz are offered for free in PDF format on DZone or you might find them in glossy hard paper when going to conference/code camp/etc. Most of the developers I know have DZone on their RSS reader but have never taken the time to look at the RefCardz that are available.

The RefCardz can be found on here.

Here is a few of my favourites:

• SCRUM (by Michael James)
• Core .NET (by John Skeet)
• C# (by John Skeet)
• Design Patterns (by Jason McDonald)

I've heard about ALT.NET about a year ago. At first, I thought that it was about using alternatives to Microsoft or to avoid Microsoft software. ALT.NET was supposed to be about going "alternative" and being against "The Man" and being for "The People". Well, I must agree that I wasn't totally right with that. I mean, Microsoft make some mess but it also does a lot of great tools and particularly a great IDE with lots of extensibility point.

Then, I did what I should have done in the beginning. I looked up the definition. On the ALT.NET website, we have this:

We are a self-organizing, ad-hoc community of developers bound by a desire to improve ourselves, challenge assumptions, and help each other pursue excellence in the practice of software development.

Hum... that's a totally different story now. The emphasis is mine and helps get the key points. First, I would have never gotten into a field that I hate and I love to learn. That makes the desire to improve ourselves done. I always challenge assumptions and try to find the better tool for the job. I know that Microsoft makes some great tools but sometimes they just don't cut it. They will someday... but they not always will. Most of the time, you can't wait for Microsoft to build a tool that will help you finish a software... so you get what works for you at the moment.

Finally and not last, "help each other pursue excellence". That is the hardest one. Of course, I participate in the .NET Montreal Usergroup, but... I felt that more could be done. I then started to speak with Greg Young and other passionate programmers in Montreal. Something that Greg kept repeating during our "Beer Meeting" was always: "But what concretely can we do to improve the level of the people in Montreal?". This stayed in my mind for weeks.

Since I wanted to help improve my fellow programmers and I thought that we learn best while coding... I started searching for a way to improve everyone while coding. It happens that it already exist and it's named a Coding Dojo.

Last Thursday, I organized the very first Coding Dojo for the ALT.NET Montreal group. We were few but learned a lot. We also had a lot of practice in learning TDD. It was hard since I never did a Coding Dojo before. I learned a lot, and our fellow programmers learned a lot. I'll try to get one Dojo per month and to get more and more people to join the group. As Kevin Coster was told... "if you build it, they will come".

So my last word goes to Scott Bellware. All hope is not gone Scott. People around the world is still organizing to teach other people best practices and to try to raise the bar of everyone. Our group is small... but if it had to start somehow it had to be small. I hope all hope is not gone on your side Scott. Passionate programmers love to learn and we are trying to offer them a way to learn and improve themselves and at the same time... propagate their knowledge to the workers that didn't cared enough to come.

This post is sadly not going to be about code so much that it's going to be about the profession. Some professions have it easy. You can cut hairs without having to learn something new every 2-3 months. You can build houses without having to learn new methods every year. Of course, all professions are evolving and new ways to do the same task more effectively are created.

What is really different when you are coding is that new languages are coming every 1-2 years. Methodologies are coming every 5 years. New frameworks are coming every 5-6 months. I might be off on those numbers but I feel pretty confident about it. WPF came in less than 2 years. C# 3.0 came in a year and a half ago. C# 4.0 is due to 2010.

All those technology require a lot of our time to learn. This is the main reason why there is so much conference, workshop and community event happening in a single city. This year, I'm going to the .NET Montreal User group , I'm trying to organize a Coding Dojo, I'm attending the Montreal Codecamp 2009 and I'm presenting at this same Codecamp. My question here is... is it too much?

I feel that I won't learn enough in my lifetime to but a great programmer but that if I work enough, I might just be good enough to be proud of my work and make changes in the way that we do our job (The Daily WTF anyone?).

However, even if the amount of changes are tremendous... I don't see any desire to participate in community events. It doesn't mean a lack of desire to improve. I just think that a lot of people like to learn on their own off a book or by doing the trip themselves.

How is it on your side? How is it like in the US? India? Slovakia (yeah! got a lot of those readers!) ?

What is your take on participating inside the community and self improvement?