mgroves

Here's a quick overview of what I did today:

• Keynote from Mary Poppendieck about Lean Software Development. Lots of great real-world examples.
• "What Makes Ruby Different". This session attempted to compare/constrast Ruby with C# and Java. While the presenters were obviously biased towards Ruby in a lot of ways, they still did a great job in highlighting and explaining the key differences. A great session put on by the EdgeCase guys.
• "Intro to MongoDB". MongoDB is a non-relational object-oriented database. A lot of devs (including myself) seemed to struggle with the idea of not having joins or referential integrity built in. I plan to do db4o research and put together an intro presentation this year, so maybe that will increase my comfort with the concept.
• Keynote form Hank Janssen. Pretty boring, although I think the PHP (and other OSS) contributions that Microsoft is making are incredibly important, and a huge step in the right direction.
• "Ruby and Rails for the .NET Developer". Yet another Ruby session for me. This one was a much faster pace than other similar sessions I've been to so far, which is a positive. Still don't feel comfortable with Ruby or think it's the right language for me.
• During the vendor sessions, I found that Alex Papadimoulis (of thedailywtf) was actually here at Codemash! I totally gushed, as he's somewhat of a nerd celebrity these days. He took a picture with me and autographed a mug. What a great guy!
• "Intro to Domain-Driven Design". Hands-down, best session so far. Barry was funny, entertaining, and certainly informative and interesting. I plan to pick up the Eric Evans book and read it soon, and it will be good to have some context before I go into it.
• Finally, the Codemash cocktail party. I had many drinks, had many conversations with smart people, and generally made as many people uncomfortable as I could. I also played a game of Munchkin, which is kinda like a lightweight RPG/card game. It's a bit political, but I really like the concept and will probably pick a copy up.