Category: Social Space

Blue Moon Burgers >> Nerd Lunch

Tomorrow (Thursday) at Blue Moon Burgers in Fremont will be a nerd lunch.  If you’re interested you should definitely head over that way and introduce yourself.  (I’m 90% sure I’ll be there)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-moon-burgers-fremont-seattle

-Cheers

Twitter Peoplez

I always see these #ff or #followfriday lists on Twitter.  I figured I’d put together a list, then I ended up creating another list, and another.  It appeared I was past my 140 character limit so here are those lists of Twitterers to follow.

Amazon Web Services Twitterers

Windows Azure Twitterers

Silverlight Twitterers

.NETters (No particular groupings…)

With that list I ponder – anyone have any additional suggestions for follows in these or other software development related areas?

Cool Places, Things, and Groups in Seattle So Far?

I am new to Seattle from the "I live here" perspective.  I have travelled here and visited more than a few times.  The last week or so I have been wandering a bit and checking out various groups such as Web Analytics Wednesday and possibly will check out the Startup Drinks Group in Ballard this Friday.  All in all I’m happier with my move from Portland to Seattle than I originally thought I’d be (because Portland is seriously awesome too).  Seattle is surprising me in a few ways that I actually didn’t expect, one of them is the tech scene presence is a little bit better than I originally thought it was (good job tech scene pplz).

There are a few points I am still curious about.  Maybe some readers could help me out with the following:

  1. Where and when do the people interested in Saas, Cloud Computing, and similar topics get together, hang out, have drinks, or otherwise?  I haven’t found too much going on around these topics.
  2. Ok, I have found a number of awesome coffee shops to hang out at on those days were I don’t go into the office.  So does anyone else have any suggestions for cool places to pull out the laptop and crank on some code and such?
  3. I really dig hearing about all the awesome startups in Seattle, which Seattle 2.0 is pretty awesome in relating, but is there anything else I should check out?

That’s my burning curiosities at the moment, so if any of your dear readers have any thoughts on these things, or know of anything please do leave a comment or three.  : )

I moderate, so if they don’t show up immediately it will eventually.  Thanks!

Seattle #altnet

Just a few of the key points brought up during the #altnet meeting on Saturday this weekend.  There were a number of other topics, but these stuck in my mind as something I am more interested in.

  • katas | How to transition the learning from katas into the more elaborate testing realm of fakes, mocks, stubs, and such.
  • Smells |  ViewModels, testing WPF and Silverlight.  How to test for latency,
  • Upfront versus down the road costs.  How to decide when something should be learned at a macro level.
  • UI Testing | What is a good method or practice to use to keep the testing time to a minimum.

These four points bring me to my current story list of code to write.

  • Knock out a kata or two, and elaborate on the katas so that they have a more real world use for Enterprise (and other) Developers that have lots of abstracted layers and other parts to move through.
  • I really need to get back to my Silverlight and WPF skills.  Somehow I need to bring these skills into my daily Azure Cloud work, which should be relatively easy, I just have to do it.
  • Not sure I will have time, but I would like to write up some cost analysis (not just $,  but in time, effort, and other costs) associated with certain up front design and up front testing versus testing or design after the fact.  Of course this entire discussion point is very relative, but I am sure I can dig up some information somewhere.
  • UI Testing.  It was an interesting topic at ALT.NET, but doubtful I will touch on it much until I get more dedicated WPF/Silverlight/Web UI Work.  Right now there just isn’t enough value it it for me (kind of based on the aforementioned topic).