CodeStock is a great developer-driven event that’s hosted in Knoxville, TN. It’s a terrific bargain: two days of learning and hanging out with other great devs, plus food and drinks, all for a price that’s significantly less than other similar events. As is the case every year, attendees decide which sessions will be part of CodeStock. I’ve submitted three sessions this year, and I want your votes!
SOLID – What Is It Good For? Absolutely… Nothing!?!?!
“Blasphemy! How dare you disparage the sacred acronym of SOLID?!?!!” Relax, I agree! SOLID is great. Paying attention to these principles will often lead you right and only seldom lead you wrong. But there’s a deeper truth underneath the SOLID principles. It’s about a topic you were most likely educated about (poorly) in your software engineering courses. Coupling. Coupling, that maintainability-killing monster that your professors vaguely warned you about, is what SOLID helps you avoid. SOLID is all about reducing coupling. In this session, you’ll get a quick introduction to SOLID, learn all about cohesion and coupling, and see useful statistics for assessing the two. Once you better understand what coupling is and how SOLID helps you avoid it, you will see that the principles are useful reminders and guides. You will find yourself far better equipped than before to evaluate design alternatives and minimize coupling than you were with SOLID alone.
Test-Driven Development Using SpecsFor
Are you one of those people that just doesn’t “get” TDD? Have you tried it, but found that it only hindered you instead of helped? If so, this session is for you. In 60 minutes, we’ll go from “Neophyte Tester” to “Lord of the Tests” using NUnit, Moq, StructureMap, and SpecsFor. If you like PowerPoint or dream of never-ending bullet-point lists, this session is not for you. However, if you find lambda expressions exciting, if you are fascinated by Resharper wizardry, and if you prefer a more code-oriented discussion, this just might be the session you’re looking for.
Build Your Own Application Framework with ASP.NET MVC 3
You’ve finally done it. You sold it to your fellow developers. You fought with your boss and finally won his buy-in. You’re finally making the switch to ASP.NET MVC. You promised your boss more features, less bugs, and faster turn-around. But there’s a surprise waiting for you. ASP.NET MVC is much less a “framework” than a set of building blocks that you can use to create an actual framework. If you don’t invest in building up a proper framework for your application, you will encounter maintenance woes that make even WebForms look tame. In this session, I’ll show you how to take full advantage of what ASP.NET MVC brings to the table while creating a robust, extensible application framework. You’ll see how to push common concerns into your framework and away from your day-to-day development activities. Topics we’ll cover include establishing conventions for generating your UI, how to leverage newdependency-injection features of MVC 3, separating concerns with an application bus, and we’ll even cover some jQuery black magic.
So what are you waiting for? Go register and vote (for me!) right now. Early bird registration is only $60 and includes two days of awesome content plus food and a shirt. You really can’t beat that!