DevBlog

Day Two started off with loading attendees in my rental car and stopping at McDonalds for breakfast on the way to the venue. Meeting up with old friends is one of my favorite things at a conference. In the car were Rod Paddock and John V. Peterson, who I have known for a very long time.

Beyond the Core Concepts of OOP

When the DevLink sessions were announced, there were two sessions that jumped to the top of my ?Must See List?, both presented by Claudio Lassala. One was ?Design Patterns?, which unfortunately was scheduled at the same time as my ?Domain Driven Design for the Average Application? session. The other was ?Beyond the Core Concepts of OOP?. Claudio is another old friend and I knew his session would be great. He did not disappoint.

Claudio started out with a review of the core concepts of OOP. These are the things we all have heard about many times and should know.

• Abstraction ? Can only focus on one thing at a time
• Encapsulation ? Keep data private
• Inheritance ? ?Is a? relationship
• Polymorphism ? Objects shape shift around

When creating classes, we need to remember the ?ilities?

• Reusability
• Extensibility
• Maintainability
• Testability

But wait, there?s more! To really use OOP properly we need to use the SOLID principles

• Single Responsibility Principle ? A class should have one and only one responsibility
• Open/Closed Principle ? A class should be open for extension but closed for modification
• Liskov Substitution Principle ? A subclass should be able to replace it?s parent class
• Interface Segregation Principle ? Make fine-grained classes that are client specific
• Dependency Inversion Principle ? Depend on abstractions, not concreteness

This was a session that lots of meat and lots to think about afterwards, but the topic is so important to use as developers.

JQuery 101

The second session of the day was ?JQuery 101? by Rod Paddock. I?d heard alot about JQuery, but because I don?t do web development I?d never looked into it. If you do web development and aren?t using JQuery, you should be.

JQuery makes Javascript easy to use. It goes hand-in-hand with CSS. JQuery is a way to easily implement Javascript using CSS. Because it?s really powerful, it?s difficult to explain and show in a session summary. My best advice is to run, do not walk to your local bookstore and pick up book about JQuery.

Being More Than a Code Monkey

After Rod?s session, I did my session on ?Continuous Integration in .NET?, then it was time for lunch. Then I did some networking before the next session, ?Being More Than a Code Monkey? by Michael Wood. Because of the networking, I got to the session late. Too bad because Michael had some great points.

I?ve long expounded the importance of code standards and keep source code easy to read. After all, you?ll write it once but read it many times. I?ve used the book Code Complete by Steve McConnell as a guide. I recently picked up Clean Code by Robert Martin and have slowly been working through it. And, it seems it was used as the basis for Michael?s session.

Concepts such as what kinds of comments and how many are important. It turns out that most comments in code aren?t needed. If you write self-documenting code, even fewer are needed.

There are many more, but like I said, I got to the session late. Pick up Robert Martin?s book. I highly recommend it.

Nashville Sounds

After Michael Wood?s session I did a bit more networking, then left a bit early to drop off stuff at the hotel before going to the conference party at the Nashville Sounds baseball game. It?s a AAA team affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers. I actually saw Nashville play in Salt Lake City a few days before DevLink started. This time they were at home facing Fresno.

A party patio at the stadium had been reserved for us and a great spread of hotdogs, hamburgers, and pulled pork was provided. The game was lots of fun. A great way to wind down from fantastic sessions.

After the game, I headed back to the hotel to do a run through of my Saturday session, then off to bed.

// posted by Craig Berntson @ 10:22:00 PM