I’m in the market for a new computer… which one should I get?

Like a lot of people in the computer industry I get asked this question *a lot*. Friends, family, third cousins once removed all seem to hunt me down when they are in the market for a new computer. I don’t mind, but I’ve gotten used to giving the same answer. I’m posting my answer here as a reference to myself, them, and anyone else this might help…

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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 »

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.

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?

Last month (November 4th, 2009), I had the privilege of speaking at Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” Launch for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in Dallas. While no one was there to record *my sessions* specifically, Microsoft has posted similar session from other parts of the country. I wish I could link (or embed) them directly since it takes some clicking to get to them. Instead, here’s a quick walkthrough. Enjoy!

1. Go to Microsoft’s “The New Efficiency” website http://thenewefficiency.com *

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This is a test post that I am writing from my Android myTouch phone for @briangorbett with the Android wpToGo app..

Although, I really have to wonder… what is sooo important that you have to blog it from your phone and couldn’t just update twitter?

Last Thursday I posted my thoughts about Microsoft’s OSS announcements (go digg it: 3 Reasons Microsoft Needs an Open Source Officer), namely the formation of the CodePlex Foundation (awesome) and the departure of Sam Ramji (bummer). My take is that this is a great opportunity for Microsoft to take open source projects at Microsoft up a notch and raise the stakes with a big bold move by bringing in someone like my friend whurley (William Hurley – currently the chief architect of open source strategy at BMC).

This morning I turned on my computer to see that Todd Weiss and the folks at Linux.com had featured this idea on their home page. Go check it out the full article!

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While I was out at the MVP Summit this summer I had a chance to catch up with Brian Prince from Microsoft and we talked about using Dependency Injection for better code level architecture.  Check out the full video on Microsoft’s ARCCast.

When you’re done. Check out my Dependency Injection on Silverlight presentation.

Today there were two big announcements from Microsoft regarding their involvement with the Open Source communities. First, was the formation of the CodePlex foundation, an open source foundation for the

Enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities

Awesome. Great. Fantastic. This is the natural progression of a lot of the open source work that’s been happening at CodePlex, in the ASP.NET MVC stack and a lot of the other OSS projects that Microsoft has been initiating and contributing to lately.

The other announcement was more disappointing, Bill Hilf, the general manager of Windows, announced that Sam Ramji would be leaving his post at Microsoft to be the interim president of the CodePlex Foundation (cool – but why interim?) and then he would be pursuing some other opportunity.

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