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by Sam Gentile.
Original Post: CLR Internals for One More Time Dec 6th
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As a reminder, I will be in Baltimore on Dec 6th for the CMAP INETA group to deliver CLR Internals for perhaps the last time ( I may do it at DevTeach 2006 as it was one of the highest rated talks there). Why do I say last time? Well, I'm fairly bored with the CLR after 6 years, and I'm not really feeling that a lot of audiences care about even knowing the basic principles of Richter chapters 1-3 and such.
On the first topic, I am worlds away from where I was four years ago when I was one of the first 3 .NET bloggers along with Peter Drayton and Simon Fell. I was passionate about the CLR/CLI ever since I started with NGWS in 1999 and I tried to convey that passion about the CLI, Rotor and many such things to audiences around the world. I also mistakenly got pegged as a “low-level” guy with that and COM Interop. The thing is that it doesn't at all match where I am a right now. The move to Solutions Architect MVP was a good one as that accurately reflects my passions now: Architectural Design Patterns, Code as Model, Data Modeling, and especially SOA (or whatever you want to call it) systems. I am seeing extraordinary power in the architectural solutions offered by Service-Orientation, Loose-Coupling and solutions based on that paradigm such as Indigo, err, WCF. My company in fact is benefiting greatly today from both the power and simplicity of the WCF. Also in the architectural space, I continue to be fascinated by Smart Client architectures and CAB combined with services. The PAG folk are in fact hitting on all cylinders right now. The CLR folks haven't really led me to a path of continuing interest and it sometimes seems that all the talk of the CLI is worthless when the only implementations allowed are Microsoft's' and Rotor has to be fought over just to stay alive. Nuff said there.
Now to the talk part, I'm a bit tired of people coming up and saying something like “that was the most amazing talk. I didn't know much of that stuff and it was great but I don't know where I would use that in my ASP.NET (or substitute other suitable technology) project.” And I wonder how can .NET developers not use or care about Assemblies, Assembly Versioning, Strong Names, JIT, Value vs. Reference types, Boxing/Unboxing, and when/how to implement IDisposable and the dangers of writing Finalizers. Many just want to return to the safety of their drag and drop worlds where ignorance is bliss and they can coast without the basics. Not all or many but it's there enough.
I have also re-ignited my passion for Agile development and helping get software development processes more rational in producing business value rather than buckets of UML diagrams or documents. Agile isn't the latest trend for me like some or as some people have suggested. I have been at it since the mid 90's on the original Wiki with the original XP. I am not trying to say I'm any better than anyone else, as Agile has taught me a lot of humility or that it is the only way of developing software. I'm just saying that once I did get it (it took me well documented years to shake BDUF on the Wiki), I never lost it and I have tried to employ as much of it as I could on any given job. Thankfully, I work in an Agile company where we do all 13 Practices of XP + Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs), FIT Tests and much more. We don't do it because its trendy or has a big name. We all do it because each one of us has been at this for many years elsewhere and have not had lots of success with other ways of doing it. When we did succeed, it was the expense of ourselves, and our families and time. I believe people are the frontier, not technology. Technology is easy. Getting people to be humble, work together and deliver business value together is the hard, but much more rewarding part for me. The happiest part of my life right now? Just being a developer on kick-ass team of smart Agile developers and getting to do what I consider right. Sure, I have the title of Architect, but my greatest joy is in not acting it but just being on a Collective Code team, well actually Collective Architecture/Design team.
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