My CodeMash 2010 experience

I have enjoyed reading other posts about how much people enjoyed CodeMash. It is my favorite yearly conference. The people are brilliant, and energized about technology. It’s also one of very few events that embrace people with very different views.

I use CodeMash to learn about technologies I don’t get much time to use during my regular work.  This year, that was Ruby, and Silverlight.

First ruby.  I took a crazy route.  I went to the pre-compiler with Joe O’Brien and Jin Weinrich on the Ruby Koans. But I did it with a twist:  Instead of the reference Ruby implementation, I used IronRuby. After some initial hiccups that worked quite well.  The test harness used by the Ruby Koans makes use of an END block in the test code. An END block (in Ruby) is code that is executed as the interpreter exits. It’s rather common as a test harness: load all the tests, and have the END block reflect on all tests, and execute them. It took me a while to get over that hump, but once I did, I learned quite a bit about ruby during the rest of the morning.

During the main conference, I went to some other .NET and Ruby talks (see My CodeMash Schedule). I’m impressed with the integration story for dynamic languages and the rest of the .NET stack. I am not a Ruby expert by any means, but I’ve whetted my appetite for more Ruby learning. And now, I feel like I can be somewhat productive in the language.

I went to both of Jesse Liberty’s Silverlight talks. Going into a .NET topic may not seem like stretching my horizons, but I don’t have a lot of background in Silverlight (Mike Woelmer knows quite a bit more than I do).

Jesse gave two talks: One was very basic, and the other a bit more advanced. Jesse is a great speaker, he’s very engaging, and provides a great amount of information in a small amount of time. He provided a great foundation for someone starting in Silverlight, with or without a .NET development background. I’m much more equipped to dive into the richness that is Silverlight. Jesse helped me get over that initial hurdle of working in a new environment.

It’s the rest of CodeMash that makes the conference special: The time outside of sessions was filled with great conversations about all kinds of technologies. That’s what makes CodeMash special. Hey, it was such a mixing of different views that the Java Posse even invited Chris Smith and I to be on their CodeMash panel. It was CodeMash, so no one came to blows.

Of course, after the tech talk was over, I spent the weekend at the Kalahari with the family in the water park.