David Laribee coined the term ALT.NET. What it means, and why it’s going to be the_hot_word? David basically explained it in 4 points:
What does it mean to be to be ALT.NET? In short it signifies:
- You’re the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
- You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
- You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
- You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.)
It narrows down to: “Stay open-minded”. Roy, took it one step further, by creating a list of, what is hot and what’s not in ALT.NET people world. As he wrote, that list is not his point of view, and he disagrees with some points there. Then Sam, reproduced Roy’s list with changes to reflect his point of view. Here’s his version (black color – Roy’s initial list, red/brown: Sam’s changes)
Hot |
Not |
Castle, |
DataSets, Dataset Designer, Entity Framework, MS |
Web Forms, |
|
MSF Agile, MSF For CMMI |
|
Evolutionary Design and Development |
Big Design Up Front |
Ruby + IronRuby, Python + IronPyton, DLR, Silverlight(?) |
? |
OR\M (NHibernate, LLBLGen Wilson OR/M, etc..), LINQ to SQL |
DLinq, Data Access Block, DataSets, Plain ADO. NET |
Open Source (Mono, SourceForge), CodePlex + Subversion |
Application Blocks, |
MVC and MVP (RoR, MonoRail..), MVP/MVC in CAB + SCSF |
Web Forms, |
|
VSS, VSTS Source Control |
Build Automation and CI |
Team Build |
TDD and Unit Testing |
MSTest for unit testing, VSTS |
Subtext, DasBlog, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, FeedBurner |
Microsoft MSN Spaces, Community Server(?) |
Simplicity in Design, YAGNI, Do the Simplest Thing |
P&P |
|
Working at MS |
Google Gears, Occasionallly Connected Smart Clients |
|
.NET 3.X (WF, WPF. Silverlight) |
.NET 2.0 |
DI, IoC, StructureMap, Windsor/MicroKernel, Spring for .NET |
Object Builder |
Conferences: |
VSLive, TechEd, DevConnections |
I to some extent agree with Sam, but there are some point I’d like to comment on:
- Why P&P is not hot? I don’t get it, it’s not a mainstream group at Microsoft, they created some tools that people use, and praise, like software factories, CAB… They’re the closest team at Microsoft to ALT.NET, they’re one of the few (or the only) team at Microsoft that releases nUnit tests along with the code, heck – they release many tools I consider to be ALT.NET, so keeping them on the dark side of the force is misunderstanding.
- About working at Google vs. working at Microsoft. It’s hype. Google is overhyped. And what’s in Google for .NET developer, c’mon! Sam recognized it with his change, I’d change it even further to: “Working at company that does agile development (probably using ALT.NET tools)” vs. one that doesn’t period.
- Google Gears – what’s so great about it? for .NET developer? I think Roy has a very good point about it.
With the rest of the list I more or less agree. And what do you think?