I’ve been working with some friends on a project for a while now, and it is finally time to talk about it more publicly as it is eventually coming to life : DotNetHub !
DotNetHub is a new community about the Microsoft .Net Platform as well as the Agile Methodologies.
DotNetHub will be a bit particular for 2 reasons:
- First, it will be dedicated mainly to french-speaking people, mostly living in Belgium, Luxembourg, France & Switzerland (but, if you are elsewhere, don’t hesitate to contribute !). Why only french-speaking people ? Simply because there are already tons of english-speaking communities, all very good, but my friends and I felt that there was a void to be filled, especially here in Belgium (French people have DotNetGuru & Tech Head Brothers !).
- Secondly, as mentioned, we will not only focus on technological aspects but also on the methodological ones, something that we find missing in other communities, but that is nonetheless as important. Bringing those two aspects together in the events & conferences we are going to organize will be a big challenge, but it’s worth it !
We’re hoping to have many people joining us in order to create a very dynamic community. We are also actively looking for sponsors … so if you’re interested, please contact us.
I’m already very happy to announce that our first event will take place on the 20th of January with Jonathan “Peli” de Halleux from Microsoft Research, who will talk about “Stubs, Moles & Pex“. Go register on the website, the number of places is limited !
If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, … please visit us ! 
Update : A more detailed presentation in french by Pierre-Emmanuel can be found here.
I’ve been pretty busy for the past months … I didn’t have or take the time to write interesting posts and I mostly just linked other articles written by much smarter people than I am.
Nevertheless I wanted to post here a few ramblings …
- Java developers are smarter than .Net developers. They know what SOLID is. They know the theory, not just the tools.
- Scrum looks good … has anybody seen it applied correctly ? (cfr. day to day xp, Flaccid Scrum & Technical Debt)
- It’s very very very difficult to measure a developer’s productivity … don’t believe me ? well, you may be smart but smarter people wrote about it : CannotMeasureProductivity. And it’s unfortunately not just an excuse … ok, we can try to evaluate it through code reviews, but it’s not going to be the panacea.
- Bored of being a simple developer ? well, that’s an easy one : start a company !!! now, how to make it successful ? well … hum … well … there’s no success formula, you have to cleanup & refactor until it’s green … and then start all over again. I think I heard that somewhere already … (How hard could it be ?)
- Why the hell is it so damn hard to write a good business-writeable DSL ? Most of the time because the ‘Less is good’ boy will be pushed away in favor of its evil brother ‘Less it not enough’ (BusinessReadableDSL, DSLQandA) and will lead to an horrible ‘DSLitis’. But don’t get scared too quickly, if you proceed carefully, at least give it a shot, it might be worth it. (ParserFear)
- Are senior / experienced developers that cost at least 2 times more than junior developers really that more productive or bringing that much benefits ? You’re telling me, ‘Bob the rich business guy’, that hiring 2 junior / average developers costing the same as or less than ‘John’ the super duper star developer, they will produce less, or even, considering the improvement over time, the work quality will remain, for a given (short to medium) period of time, under the one of an experienced guy. Well … yeah, and I don’t have numbers to backup that assertion. You just have to believe (PreferDesignSkills, CheaperTalentHypothesis, XFiles).
- F# is damn interesting … but why do I sometimes have to read that line 5 times before I get it ??? Is my brain so ‘wow dude, take it easy’ already ?
- Silverlight is … Cool ;o)
That’s it … maybe one day I’ll write a real article instead of linking to other’s posts. lol
Another great article by Joel Spolsky: How to be a program manager
Just ordered a few new books to keep me busy during the long & cold winter nights …
- Concurrent Programming on Windows Vista – Architecture, Principles and Patterns: At the time of multi-core CPUs, having a good understanding of concurrent programming is crucial.
- Agile Project Management with Scrum: want to improve my management skills … they still suck although I’m making big efforts.
- Expert F#: deep dive into the functional way of thinking & programming. Looks damn interesting.
- The definitive ANTLR Reference – Building Domain-Specific Languages: Deadly interesting too … while waiting for Ayende’s book on the subject.
- Learning XNA 3.0: Just for fun.
Next on the list will be VS 2010, M & Repository stuff when there will be some good references on the subject … yeah I know, I’m an old-fashioned type of guy, I like to turn pages made of paper.
Any other good book to recommend?
Here is a very nice post about the traditional design principles to follow when designing highly-reusable object-oriented class libraries & frameworks:
Design Principles
Update your cheat sheet if you were missing some 
One of my colleagues told me about Assembla.com … I was amazed by their offer
Free hosting (up to 500Mb) of Subversion + Trac for private or open source projects.
This is great ! No need to setup a local subversion repository anymore for your pet projects … just register for your private online subversion repository with additional tools for project management & team collaboration with a clean Web 2.0 UI.
