Developing UX

I received a message on Facebook last week from a friend of mine that asked this question:

I have recently decided that I would love to go to school to learn programming. I just wanted to know if you had any advice or suggestions that could help me out (I know it’s a very open ended question)? Also I wanted to know if you had any suggestions on books to read regarding Design Patterns (particularly related to web development).

Great question. Let’s tackle those starting with the second part…

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I’m starting off this series talking about Object Oriented Programming. It’s amazing how many people write C# or VB (.NET) with long, procedural methods with really no understanding of the true fundamentals of OO design.

I know, I know – it’s not you, and know what? I’m not talking about you.. but check out the code from the person next to you. See what I mean?

Just because you’re writing in an OO language, doesn’t mean that you’re writing OO code, or taking advantage of the Object Oriented benefits. An Object Oriented language is more than classes with methods, properties and events (even VB 6 had that!).

Learn the Fundamentals.

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If you are going to read through my “10 practices that every developer should start right now” series, then you probably want to know where these 10 practices came from, why I chose these 10 – really, what so important about secure coding anyway?   – I think that it’s important to know that these aren’t just 10 random items to fill a couple of blog posts. These are all practices that have been thoroughly thought out. This list is something that I started to formulate over a year ago based on my experience as a consultant, working as a technical editor, and discussions with countless MVPs, other consultants and in my interviews with potential consultants… Read more »

Personal post. This year our church set aside three days to fast, pray and dig deep in to God’s word. I’ve never done anything like this before. I loved it. I once heard a story about the taking time to sharpen your axe. In other words reflect on the future, and prepare emotionally, physically and spiritually for what lies ahead.

I think that most people go through life never thinking about how or what they might need to prepare for in the future. We had great speakers every night. I’m including the three talks below. What are you doing to prepare for this new year?

Enjoy!

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Update: Since technically a DI Container could be considered part of SOLID, I’ve swapped it out for Secure Coding… more on this soon!

If I ever right a book on becoming a .NET Ninja, these are the things that I want to cover.

Introduction

OO

SOLID

Use a Container (DI)

Secure Coding 101

Patterns

Automated Tests

Source Control

Continuous Integration

Agile | Lean | Scrum | XP

Team Dynamics

Never Stop Learning

Eventually, I’d like to write a book and dedicate at least a chapter to each of these (although any one of these topics could be a book in and of itself) In the mean time, I think that I’ll start with a blog post on each one, and maybe make it a goal to eventually do a User Group talk covering each topic? I’m looking forward to flushing these out as posts. I hope that you will enjoy them too!

What sort of things would you add to the list?