YOOT

There will probably be thousands of posts like this one but anyway, here I go with my own … I wanna take a little time looking back at 2009 and then set my personal expectations for 2010.

Overall, 2009 was a great year

• I finally created my own company ! This gives me a certain degree of freedom in choosing the types of project I want to work on, the knowledge I want to acquire and even more opportunities to meet a lot of very talented people.
• I learned a lot … especially on how to have a more business-centered focus on software development. Thinking about business value, weighting different solutions benefits vs costs, and also, listening & talking more to the business guys.
• I read a lot, although I still haven’t finished all the books I started. Functional & concurrent programming, domain-specific languages, Scrum, Business/IT Alignment are in my continuous learning bag.
• I followed a great course with Udi Dahan and it helped me gain some new perspectives on how to rethink about software design in general. Messaging, SOA & DDD are fascinating topics I want to further learn from.
• Articles & presentations of Eric Evans on DDD and Udi on CQRS had a tremendous impact on my view of software building. We, software developers tend to focus too much on creating cool frameworks or libraries, and solving complex technical problems, while forgetting about our main goal : providing business value. Sometimes, solving a problem from a business point of view is far easier than at a technical level. Also, we tend to be maniac about every line of code we write … but as E. Evans is saying “Precision design are fragile” & “Not all of a system will be well designed“. Focus your efforts on writing good code in parts of the system that provide most of the business value. It is perfectly fine to write not so good code elsewhere (the duck-tape programmer has its role to play!), just make sure you make everything explicit.
• Finally, with some friends, I created a new community about the .Net platform & the Agile methodologies, DotNetHub. It’s a very exciting project

So, 2009 was so amazing that I’m eagerly awaiting 2010 !

• I already booked a DDD immersion workshop with E. Evans in Paris, mid-February, and I’m sure it’s gonna be a great course. Maybe others will follow as I find myself learning a lot during those intensive courses.
• DotNetHub will keep me busy, organizing great conferences with, well-known and well-known-to-be speakers.
• I absolutely have to finish all the books I started before I buy any new one !
• I will restart working on my app based on Northwind and demonstrating DDD coupled with NServiceBus. I have to admit, I got a bit side-tracked by DotNetHub and another major personal event (read further lol).
• Probably learn some new technical stuff like C# 4.0, VS2010/TFS2010, Dublin & some more F# but honestly, that’s less important and most probably easier than the previous stuff (although F# is quite funky). Using your brain and training your critical sense to filter marketing / wrong piece of information / silver bullets is actually the hardest part of our job.

So, that’s about it folks ! This is the list of my expectations for 2010 … but that’s actually all secondary compared to the main challenge I will have to face : becoming a father end of May 2010 ! Indeed, my wife is pregnant of my first child. I’m really excited about it … now, on top of my to-do list : read the baby books or get killed lol

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all !

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?

My house will look like a bookstore soon I've been reading & ordering too many books lately … lol

(Guess it's gonna slow down soon, our most awaited friend 'Sun' is finally coming back to Belgium, my lovely rainy home-country. No wonder why beers are so popular here.)

In case you missed them, here is a quick list of some highly recommended books:

• Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio DSL Tools: Good read to discover Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio.
• Programming WCF Services: another masterpiece from Juval Lowy. Cautious: This is a tough read, not an introductory book. But it will surely help you appreciate the design of WCF in all its glory (am I exaggerating ?). Also, if you have the opportunity to attend Juval's stellar presentation 'Beyond the endpoints', don't hesitate 1 second: it was an enlightening experience.
• Patterns of enterprise application architecture: Not new, but you'll find yourself often coming back to it as it provides so much insight about the design of so-called 'enterprise applications'. Don't call yourself senior .net developer or architect if you haven't read it yet
• Java persistence with Hibernate: Yeah, I said 'Java' & 'Hibernate' … why ? because if you wanna know (mostly) everything about persistence with an ORM tool, that's the book. You can then learn any other ORM in 5 minutes.

Other books as recommendable as the previous, that I have at home but haven't read yet (and will read asap lol):

• Release It!: Just received it today, and by looking at the back cover and table of contents, I wish I had read it several years ago. One advice: Read It! That's what I'm going to do …
• Visual Studio Extensibility: The perfect companion for Domain-Specific Development with Visual Studio if you want to create DSL that are highly integrated into VS. I'd like to know more about that Visual Studio 2008 Shell also … looks promising.
• Essential Windows Workflow Foundation: Wanna gain more insight about the design of WF? Everything's in here.
• Framework Design Guidelines – Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries: Do I have to say that it's a must-read for any framework-developer ? Shamefully, I haven't read it yet. Gonna fix that.

Well … gotta go, I have 4 books to read