At our church this year, the theme for the duration of the year is The Year Of Purpose!!

The realization and fulfillment of purpose is something that is very near and dear to my heart. When I was in my late teens, my thoughts were not directed towards what I should or could be doing with my life. Getting thrust into the role of a husband and father at a young age was one of the  catalysts that put me on the path to focusing on what I should be doing with my life. And more importantly, how I could use my life and vocation to be able to share Jesus with others.

We can all have periods where we feel like we lose our way a little. We can wake up and ask ourselves "Why am I here, what am I doing"? For as much as I love software development, I am far more blessed by being able to take part in the opportunity to help someone get a clearer vision of the "Why and what".

Since it is the year of purpose, I am going to offer a copy of the amazing book "The Purpose Driven Life" to the first 5 people who email me at jp@jpboodhoo.com.

Develop With Passion!!

This is just a quick post to shed some light on what has transpired in my life over the last (almost 2 years). By most peoples standards of what constitutes a trial, this is extremely tame. For me however, it is an experience that has deeply affected me, and left me a changed person. A person, I am pleased to say, that is looking forward with excitement to what God lays before me next.

I want to say thank you to all of the people who contacted me to share their concern.

To save you a really long and drawn out story, all I am going to say is that something happened almost 2 years ago that woke me out of a place I had been for the entirety of my career prior to that point. That place was the place where a raging workaholic had been dwelling. One of the things that I realized, playing back the years through my head, was that at many points people close to me (my amazing wife, friends, family) were telling me that I had no notion of balance. In that place, I had convinced myself that I knew what balance was and that I was somehow achieving it. I was not able to hear them, or even reflect on my own work habits. The wisdom of their advice was drowned out by my own relentless ambition. A pursuit that now I see blinded me to the reality of how I was living my life. I understood the value of balance, and that people should focus on work when it's time to focus on work, and focus on family when it was time to focus on family. I would often speak to people about this as I believed I had it figured out. The reality is that my focus was first and foremost on that of my career.

To wake up one day and decide to make a conscious change to cut out a part of my personality that has been with me for the last 8 years (I have worked as a software developer since 2000) is something that caused a large ripple effect. It was difficult. Part of the difficulty, was the cold-turkey aspect of how I changed my behavior. It's a hard pill to swallow, when you think you have been living a certain way and you are hit with he harsh realization that you were just kidding yourself. I just kept replaying in my head the crappy decisions I had made. The amount of time I had lost with family and friends. I became my own worst enemy for a while there.

I am sure that when people read my last post, many were expecting something like me talking about losing a family member, or the realization of some awful illness. Those things are devastating and my heart goes out to anyone who is experiencing either of those right now. Each situation, and event affects people differently. This last year and a half proved to be quite challenging for me personally. I had to reinvent myself and figure out who I was in this new mindset. To that end, it has also been one of the most rewarding years of my life from a pure family and personal perspective.

An amazing friend told me a couple of weeks ago (I'm paraphrasing as I can't remember exactly): "When you pray to God for wisdom, prepare for the wisdom to come in the form of a painful, and challenging lesson"!! The lesson has been humbling, painful, and ultimately life-changing.

Going forward I want to use the programming skills I have to share and teach people. I also want to make sure that I take opportunities to share this story with other people who may be able to receive it in a way that can be practical for them.

Yours Humbled,

Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo

Develop With Passion

This is just a quick post to let anyone who has been trying to contact me through my skype account know that, the reason you have not been able to get through is because my skype out number was inactivated a couple of months ago. I just reactivated it!! Guess I should check on things like that a bit more frequently!!

Develop With Passion!!

Back in December I recorded a podcast with Craig Shoemaker of the Polymorphic Podcast. We had a discussion about tools and techniques that I used to stay productive while on the road. Even if you don't find yourself doing a lot of travelling, lots of the tricks/tools we discussed could be things that you may find useful.

Develop With Passion!!

With my comfort level with Git rounding the “not so uncomfortable” I decided to throw myself in heads first and move the code that I currently have hosted on assembla over to GitHub. All of the code samples that I publish now are going to be under the “Develop With Passion” banner.

GitHub is an easy choice as it makes the collaboration story much richer for people who potentially want to contribute changes to any of the source code that will live up there (as soon as I’m finished this startup at the end of April, my first task list item is to get much more code up there!!).

Currently the only project that is hosted up there is : developwithpassion.bdd

If you are unfamiliar with Git and its associated set of tools I am going to point you in the direction of an awesome post that Aaron put together which should be instrumental in getting you up and running. If you want to quickly get up to speed on git (on windows) I would recommend the following resources (Aaron mentions most of these in his post also):

• An Illustrated Guide To Git On Windows
• Getting Started With Git And GitHub On Windows
• Git
• Git Ready
• GitCasts

Develop With Passion!!

Now that I am tweeting regularly, I thought it would be time to announce that the last couple of months spent heads down working on a startup have produced some rather interesting results. This is an informational post to let people know that I am going to be getting back to a regular schedule of blog posting interesting coding techniques. This is something that I have neglected for a while, being more concerned about getting people motivated.

While my goal is to continue to serve up what motivation I can, I want to start documenting some of the things I have learned over the past year, as well as getting back to helping people out (to the best of my abilities during this busy time!!). In the spirit of things, the first question I will answer on Thursday is:

“I am trying to create something that is capable of returning a strongly typed item out of my configuration source. The configuration source will initially be the standard web.config, but only as the web.config only holds string values, I would like for my configuration object to be responsible for casting out the appropriate type. My question Mr. Jean-Paul is how would I go about setting this up using Visual Studio 2008. would I go inside my already existing Web.config or would I build a new one for my core project? Thanks for your time and help.”

And no, I am not going to be showing how to use VS to generate it for me. I want to use it as an opportunity to demonstrate more BDD, with that example in mind. This serves a dual purpose. It gives people an opportunity to see how I would tackle the design and solution of the problem using tests as my design surface, but it also ensures that the person who asked me the question gets a solution whether or not they care about the testing aspect.

After too much time spent with my head down, allowing e-mail bankruptcy (previous post should have cleared that up), I now have a good (simple) system in place that will ensure people who are truly taking time to get in contact with me get a decent response. It also gives me an opportunity to get more code centric posts out there, as well as help people!!

Develop With Passion!!

My response rate to emails for the last year has been less than stellar. This was mostly due to the fact that I did not really have a good way of managing requests that came in. So instead of trying to manage it incrementally, I often opted for the “ignore” option.

That stops today. As of this morning I put the following auto responder on my gmail account (Canned Response is a great gmail labs feature):

In an effort to increase productivity and efficiency I am beginning a new personal email policy. 

I will only be checking email at 4pm on weekdays. I will try and respond to email in a timely manner (no earlier than the morning of the next business day)  without neglecting the needs of my clients.

If you need to get in contact with me urgently please don’t hesitate to call me on my phone, the number is available on my public website , I much rather enjoy phone conversations anyway!!

Thanks for your anticipated understanding!!

God Bless You

Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo

http: www.jpboodhoo.com

email: jp@jpboodhoo.com

phone:(503)213-3507
fax:(403)770-8442

I look forward to reintegrating regular communication into the cycle!!

Develop With Passion!!

As people who have been following my tweets today (jpboodhoo), they can see that I am back and now committed to updating people on my status as well as tweeting regularly throughout the day. While I have been in a very heads down mode for the last little while, I have also fell out of contact with people I use to converse with regularly. In an attempt to restart the conversation, I am actually excited about being able to use twitter to do some out of band, and occasionally direct, messaging with people.

Have not given people much of an update since we got back from our big 6 month trip. Lots of big changes have happened in the world of the Boodhoo’s. Since the end of November we have been living in my parents basement with my sister, her husband and their 3 kids. Picture 4 adults and 7 kids running around in the same house!! My poor parents. They have been extremely gracious and very giving of their time and space.

Since our house in Calgary is being rented, with future plans to keep it as a rental, we are in the process of searching for a house. Unfortunately, because I was a bit lax on business returns etc, we currently do not qualify for a mortgage!! So we are getting very creative in house hunting right now. We have found a house that we would love to get into. It is an acreage. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have always been a hardcore city kid. One of my wife’s dreams has always been to raise the kids out on an acreage. She has been so amazing and instrumental in helping me achieve my dreams that I decided to put aside my love of city living and start looking at acreages. Then a funny thing happened. Once I saw a couple of acreages and got to spend a significant amount of time on some of them, my heart changed and I now find myself in the spot of not ever wanting to live in the crowded city again!! So moving forward we know that we are going to live on an acreage!!

We are also not living in Calgary anymore. We are moving back to Medicine Hat. I never thought I would move back to “the Hat”, but here we are, back where I met my wife 16 years ago now!!! Both grandparents live here, so Aaron and I have been able to enjoy having a lot more date nights than we have for the past couple of years. We are not concerned about not being in the big city. I am using it as a pressure point for forcing me to get a couple of startups off the ground. The first one will be launching at the end of April, pretty exciting. I am working on it with a couple of other people who already have an established product!! Even in the current economy, I could get scared and take the “safe” route of jumping back into the consulting market, but I know I will kick myself if I don’t give it a shot. I have a bunch of friends with great ideas and we are going to try to get a couple of startups off the group by the end of the year. I would much rather look back on this year with the knowledge that I tried vs looking back with regret for not trying. Better to try,fail, learn and grow that not try at all.

Another significant change for us is that we are not home schooling this year. Since our world is a little upside down right now, we have the kids enrolled in a great (small) Christian School. The class sizes are excellent and they are having a blast. It is definitely a change from home schooling, but it is a great experience for them.

We got the kids enrolled in swimming at the beginning of January. My wife grew up swimming, and if you ever saw our kids swim, you would see that they got their amazing swimming ability from her. The only one not swimming right now is Elijah, and that is cause he is too young to be enrolled in the class, otherwise he is more than capable of being in there!! It truly is amazing to watch their phenomenal progress in just the span of a month. They were already amazing swimmers before, but swimming against others has definitely raised their game!!

On the personal training front (gym training) I feel in the best shape I have ever been in, praise the Lord!! Really got back into it (intensely) at the beginning of January. I’ll talk about my routine in another post but for now here are some cool stats:

• Height – 5’5”
• Weight – 127 lbs
• Waist Size – 28 inches
• Resting Heart Rate – 56 BMP
• Body Fat Percentage – 8%
• Number of days at the gym per week (5)
• Average training session length 1hr 30 min
• Water consumed in a day – 2 –3 litres
• Meals consumed a day – 6

Watching the kids in the pool has really triggered me to want to learn how to swim well. I have never been a very good swimmer. When I was 8 years old I drowned and was resuscitated by the pool lifeguard. The fear of that event kept me out of the pool for a couple of years. Now that my wife and I workout together at the gym, the next couple of weeks I am going to be switching my workout routine to include a heavy swimming component. She is going to teach me. Keep tuned to my tweets (jpboodhoo) as I am sure I will be sharing lots of blurbs over the next little while!!

On the coding front, lots of exciting stuff is going on. Not a lot I can share yet, but that time will come!!

Develop With Passion!!

I had a great phone conversation today with a past student who is currently experiencing a state of demotivation due to the current job environment he is in. I wanted to quickly share the most important thing I had to share while I talked with him.

There have been many times in my career (at least once a year) where I go through a period (usually only lasting 2 weeks) where I seriously question why I am in software development. During these periods, it does not matter how great the job I am in is working out, I find myself not particularly drawn to be a software developer. Now before I go further, you need to know that I absolutely love being a computer programmer. I feel it is a blessing to be able to pursue the profession that you feel you have been blessed with a gift and desire to pursue. During these periods I unplug, read some books, chat with my wife about directions that I could go if I were to leave the field of software. When I was younger, it was very easy for me to get into these periods and completely withdraw myself and pout about the current “state of things”. Thankfully God allowed me to have a desire for reading and learning, and it was during one of these times that He taught me a lesson about the behaviour that I was taking on. He helped me realize that it is ok for me to go through these “valley” moments. What is important is how I respond to them. I learned that keeping myself reading and learning about things other than software during this time helped me to anchor my mind on what I was actually striving to achieve for myself and my family. I realized that the one thing that I can’t get back, and thus should not be wasting, is my time. I can get out of a slump, I can work harder, I can recoup monetary losses by sheer grit determination, but nothing I can do will ever be able to reclaim wasted time.

It is very easy to forget that time is our greatest non-renewable resource. I want to encourage you to not allow a day to go by where you do not learn something new. This does not need to be something even remotely related to your career. New learning stimulates the mind and can often be a tools that allows you to break free of ruts, habits, and negative thinking.

Make your minutes count!!

Develop With Passion.

Sitting up here in the office in a coding frenzy, I had to stop as I could hear the current Oprah show in the background and the topic was very interesting. She was interviewing young business moguls who have achieved incredible things at very young ages.

One of the common traits that all of the people shared was what? PASSION. They all reiterated something that I share with lots of people that I talk to:

“When you do something you are passionate about, it does not feel like work”!!

So many people get caught up in the pursuit of “money/security….” that they forsake the opportunity to pursue something that will have a meaningful return :

“The Realization Of Their dreams”

We live in a world where too many people  forsake their dreams for things that seem more attainable or safe. We fail because we don’t strive to reach something much higher.

I want to challenge you this year to reach for that goal that seems unattainable, I am sure that you might surprise yourself!!

Develop With Passion!!

To steal a quote from Walt Disney,this is going to be the theme I will keep trying to encourage people about this year. Don’t get too focused on the person on your left, or to the person on your right, just move forward at your own pace!!

I pray that the 2009 year will bring all of you much joy and success in your personal and professional lives.

The 2009 Nothin But .Net course schedule has now been finalized. There are some locations that are still hovering on the radar that have not been posted. A significant change that will take place this year is the attendee cap which will be placed at 16 people. Just the right size for 4 groups of 4 people. If you are hoping to register for one of the upcoming courses you will have to be patient and give me a couple of weeks, as I am currently switching over to a new registration provider.

It is my hope and prayer that this year will allow you the opportunity to grow incrementally and consistently and that you will Keep Moving Forward!!

Develop With Passion!!

A couple of people have gotten back to me about the formatting resolution, so unless I hear otherwise I will consider this issue closed (for the time being!!).

After the many emails about the code formatting issues with feed readers. Here is my attempt to get it resolved.

Please get back to me with comments, if this fixes it (or if it doesn’t):

Most people who know me realize that I am almost obsessive about how I utilize my time during the day to maximize the 8-9 hours I spend developing. This is the main reason I did not stay on twitter long the last time I signed up. I use skype for most of my phone calls, I have probably been on MSN about 13 times in my career, and I never really jumped into twitter the last time I singed up.

My goals for rejoining are to simply provide small little updates as to what I and/or my family are doing. I realize that even just little jots of information are valuable to the people who care about what is going on with us (it is a season of change here in the Boodhoo house!!). I am not going to use it as a huge conversational mechanism, mostly for micro updates.

My username is jpboodhoo in case you are one of the people who has expressed interest in keeping up to speed.

God Bless You and Develop With Passion!!

After almost a half year away from home, the traveling Boodhoo wagon is making its way back to Calgary. Contrary to popular belief, we did not setup shop in Austin. We have unfinished business to attend to in Calgary, and will be staying there until the end of April. At that time we will be heading off on the road again for more travels.

I have been making note of our journey and destinations this past year and will blog a quick summary post of our travels next week once we arrive back in Canada!!

It has been a truly amazing journey for our family, and we truly feel blessed to have been able to have the opportunity to undertake these travels, meet so many amazing people, and see so many amazing things.

God Is Good!!

In response to a great conversation I had with a friend, I just wanted to share a quote that I read in the latest issue of Psychology Today. The article focused on the concept of late bloomers in different fields of work. This quote is very similar to statements that I make in my courses:

“The moment we believe success is determined by an ingrained level of ability, as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity”

Develop With Passion!!

We finished up our stay in the UK today and left from the wonderful home we had been staying in, in Broadstairs to head onto the European leg of our tour!!

The plan was to drop off our rental vehicle, catch the ferry to Calais and then finally catch the trains that eventually would lead us to Brussels so that I could do the Meet And Greet tonight!!

Well, as great as the plan sounded, we missed the last train to Brussels and so we now have to spend the night in Calais!!

Tomorrow we will head off in the morning and make our way towards Dusseldorf. I apologize to all of the people I will not be able to meet tonight!!

Bonne nuit!!

Michel Grootjans has very kindly organized a meet and greet social in Brussels for this coming Saturday the 20th of September.

It is going a be a very informal get together where there will hopefully be an opportunity to partake in lots of interesting conversations.

The venue is here: ⁃ Sint-Gorikshallen: Sint-Goriksplein 1, 1000 Brussel and we are going to kick things off at around 9:00PM.

If you are in and around the area, please stop by as I am sure that it will be a great evening.

From Brussels the next stop will be Dusseldorf for the next session of the Nothin But .Net bootcamp!!

Develop With Passion!!

I am currently in the midst of reading an amazing book titled Lead Like Jesus. I just read a great paragraph that I feel called to share:

"Acting out of pride is like trying to blow up a balloon with a hole in it. It is lonely business requiring consistent effort with only temporary results that never satisfy or please anyone. Think of a time when you have blew up a balloon and there was a hole in it, and you will have a good mental image of what happens when you put your self-esteem in your performance and the opinions of others."

Currently I am only 1/4 way through the book, but I am already aware of the fact that the book is going to have a tremendous impact on me!!

Develop With Passion!!

I often talk with people about the many great life lessons that I have learned from reading the Bible. There is one verse in particular that I share with people when it comes to my attitude toward work. I personally believe that this verse has been something that has always allowed me to receive amazing satisfaction from the jobs I have been blessed to receive. The verse is Colossians 3:23 - 24:

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

Develop With Passion

Joel asked me to give my response to the How Did I Get Started in Dev meme so here it goes!!

How old were you when you first started in programming?

When I was 8 years old my Dad bought me a Beeb. Along with the computer I was also given a book on the BASIC language. I read the book and wrote computer programs on the computer for a whole year (I guess you can tell the geeks early on!!). Amazingly after that year of coding, I did not touch a computer again (for productive reasons) until I was back in school at the age of 20!!

How did you get started in programming?

I already stated above that I had the year of coding from 8yrs old - 9yrs old. What was I doing between 9 and 20? Video games, sports, goofing around. you name it. My wife and I got married at the tender age of 18, only a couple of months after high school graduation. For the next 1.5 years after graduation my wife and I worked in a family Dollar Store. I could not stand the job, and it was a chore to get up in the morning and feel fired up about what I was going to do that day at work. After one particularly nasty incident in the store I sat down and prayed and God told me that this was not His plan for what I was to do with my life. Some of my friends had decided to go straight from school into computer science programs at local and remote universities. I started picking their brains about some of the stuff they were doing. I got interested and decided that I should go back to school to study programming. Unfortunately, I goofed off a little too much in grade 12 and did pretty poorly in a lot of key subjects. So at the age of 19 I went back to high school to redo the core. As an aside, I was on honor roll from grades 9-11, so I knew that it was just a matter of me focusing and doing the job properly. After re-graduating, I applied at a local college in a 2 year technology program that would allow me to transfer into a computer science program. This is truly where I started to get into programming!!

What was your first programming language?

BASIC.

What was the first real program you wrote?

At the age of 9 I wrote a pong game. I was so thrilled with the end result, even if the graphics were nothing to write home about. The sense of accomplishment and the ability to express creativity in code were things that remained with me even when I took the long break from software.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

C++,Assembler,VB,VB.Net,C#,JavaScript,Ruby,Boo,PL-SQL,T-SQL,Open VMS

What was your first professional programming gig?

Working in a student records administration office at Medicine Hat College, working against an mainframe system using Open VMS.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Definitely. In reality, I would have most likely not taken the break and carried on learning programming between the ages of 9 and 20.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

One thing that has helped me maintain satisfaction and success in this profession is quite simple. Always make sure you are having fun. Don't get caught up in meaningless chases to be better than person X. If you can acknowledge that you will never know it all, and that there is always someone who knows more than you do, you open yourself up to chart your own course for how you navigate your career path. Making decisions that are actually right for you, not because you "think" you need to do it. When I look back to when I first started to right now, there is not a single point along the way where I can say that I was not having an absolute blast doing what I was doing. Even when I was not using agile methodologies, or big into unit testing, I put a high priority on having fun and exercising the creative nature of the work that we do!! Keep it fun, and the rest will follow. For the Christian developers out there you may also appreciate these words from the bible, that I read a looooong time ago and have always kept close to my heart:

What's the most fun you've ever had programming?

My entire career has been an absolute blast. I have to say that doing the Nothin But .Net courses and being able to be a catalyst for the growth and reignition of other peoples careers has been a blessing and an opportunity that has resulted in one of the most satisfying experiences for me. Being able to say that I am having a positive impact on the professional as well as personal lives of others is something that cannot be quantified!!

Who am I calling out?

Mo Khan

Sean Feldman

Justice Gray

Joey Beninghove

Scott Cowan

When I published the site I forgot about all of the links that I would be breaking to the blog that pointed at http://www.jpboodhoo.com/blog. After a comment from someone who had done a lot of linking I thought about the quickest thing I could do to fix the problem. Even though the site is built on System.Web.MVC, I thought that since all of the links would point at www.jpboodhoo.com/blog. I just tweaked IIS instead of adding in a new route (KISS).

I created a blog folder under the main directory for the web site. The folder itself was empty. Then in IIS I went to the properties for the blog folder and set it up as follows:

This is just a simple redirection, that ensures (using the simplest way possible) that all old requests, trackbacks, links etc will get pointed at the new resources that are now rooted at:

http://blog.jpboodhoo.com

Develop With Passion

It just takes a moment and one offering of $250 to transform the life of a child with the aid of the Smile Train.

Check out the site and see the difference that you could make in the life of a child in need!!

For months now I have been telling people that I was going to be launching a full blown web site. With the amount of work I had taken on, it kept getting placed on the backburner. I finally decided to delegate the task to someone else. With a little help (and by little I mean he did absolutely everything!!) from Mo, the site was built in a week. I just deployed it last night!!

Go to: http://www.jpboodhoo.com to view the site. Click around and you will be able to find out more about the things I am currently doing, information on the Nothin But. Net developer bootcamp and all sorts of other interesting tidbits. There are a couple of pages that are not currently active as the target web server does not have a SQL Server database installed yet. These pages are mostly dealing with viewing the feedback from previous courses as well as photo albums of the prior courses.

Couple of interesting points about the site:

• Built with:
  • ASP .Net MVC
  • Castle Windsor
  • NHibernate
  • Log4Net
  • SQL Server
  • CSS
• Source for the site will be released within the next couple of months (to be used as a learning tool for other developers)
• Site Design By Stuart Knox (an incredible web designer)

Stay tuned as over the next couple of months there will be exciting new content that will be released!!

Please let me know if there are things that you would like to see on the site going forward.

Develop With Passion!!

In order to not steal any thunder from the post, the title along details my sentiments about why so many people miss the mark on truly achieving their dreams. If you have not yet started reading his blog, Tim Ferris shares a lot of his own personal experiments with lifestyle tweaks that allow him to live a much "richer" life than most will ever experience.

None of this is out of your reach, and everyone has their own definition of what living a rich life means to them. If you can't say that you are currently living the life you dreamed about, only you can do something about it. I had to ask for God's guidance and be obedient to His direction, as well as take risks that seemed impossible to me to start truly living the life that my wife and I dreamed about when we first got married 12 years ago.

Please take the time to read the post titled Why Bigger Goals = Less Competition, and subscribe to the blog already!!

For those of you who are tuned to this blog hoping to see more technical content, you are going to have to be more patient. As currently I am much more focused on empowering people with respect to their thinking on how to "achieve childhood dreams".

Live and Develop With Passion!!

My family and I are big proponents of lifestyle design. I was unfamiliar with the term until I started reading the great blog of Mr. Tim Ferris.

I posted a while ago about how the Lord had prompted us to give away all of our material possessions!! Save for a few bags of clothing and some irreplaceable childhood mementos of the kids, we are officially a 100% mobile family.

For the last 2 years my family and I have been doing a lot of traveling. For the other 10 years of our marriage we did zero!! This has been a large and much welcomed change for us, and it was one of the items that we had on our original "big dream list".

Unfortunately, a large majority of the travel consisted of business related trips that left me with little time to enjoy the places that we were all visiting. My wife and I decided early on in our marriage that we would always make a commitment to travel as a family. I can count on one hand the number of times in my entire career that I have ever had to travel without my family, and all of those times were due to circumstances that were beyond our control. So though we have been traveling as a family, I can't say that I have been able to enjoy the locations as much as they have, thankfully this has been improving over the last couple of trips and is about to undertake a major overhaul!!

My wife and I have always felt the same about enjoying life one day at a time, and not just waiting for the good stuff when I get to "retirement". We want our kids to see that the world is a phenomenal place with lots of little adventures that can be taken all the time. To that end, tomorrow my family and I will be the leaving our "comfort zone" of a stable home and known environment, to hit the open road and travel the world for the next 6 months - 1 year!! We have several key places that we want to hit on our journey, but we are keeping our options open and letting the Lord direct us in the location he wants us to go.

I feel confident that all of the traveling we have been doing these past 2 years was to prepare us for this time. We are looking forward to be able to grow even stronger as a family unit, while also trusting in the Lord to help us meet our needs as we go about our travels. Initially we thought that Austin was the place that we were going to end up. At this time, we do not feel that it is the place. We want to use this journey as an opportunity for us to see new places, meet new people, and be a blessing to anyone the Lord puts in our path along our travels. As well, as potentially open our eyes to a place that we can eventually establish roots in.

What about work? I decided to bite the bullet and offer my current client the ability for me to work remotely in lieu of several months of consulting fees. They are a startup company with a potentially awesome product that just needs some time to grow their legs. I have a vested interest in seeing this thing succeed, so I will continue to do my part in a completely remote fashion. I have been working on my own for the last year and am hoping to conclude this project by the end of the year so that when we have completed our travels, I will be able to reconnect with a team that is in need of an extra developer!! This means that I am purposefully taking a hit so that I can enjoy the experience of being on the open road. There will only be a month in the next 6 months that will be a pure vacation month. The rest of my schedule should look as follows:

• 5:30AM - Wake up and work out
• 7:30AM - Start work, complete one of my most important tasks of the day
• 11:00AM - Check email once
• 11:20AM - Lunch
• 11:50AM - 2:30PM - Complete work day

At 2:30PM each day I will connect with my family and we will explore whatever location we happen to be in. I am working on a condensed schedule, as an emphasis on lifestyle design draws me away from the typical 9-5 schedule. It may take me a little longer to get my responsibilities completed, but the journey will be so much more rewarding!!

Of course, I am keeping myself open to the option of being able to work with other teams in an ad-hoc nature as we progress through our travels. Which reminds me!! In the end of October timeframe, if you happen to know of a company that would be willing to have a good remote resource available at a steal of a rate, get in contact with me!!

So far, the places that we know we are visiting are as follows:

• Vancouver
• San Francisco
• San Diego
• Panama City Beach
• Orlando
• Domican Repuplic
• England
• Dusseldorf, Germany
• Paris,France
• Las Vegas

Places that we would also like to visit during this time:

• Greece
• Turks and Caicos
• Scotland
• Rome

We head out tomorrow in the family van, and will be driving as much as we can while we are in the US and Canada. While in Europe we are going to try to exercise the train infrastructure as much as possible.

At this point we actually have no idea where our travels will ultimately take us, but we are all approaching this trip with a great deal of anticipation.

What is my point to all of this? 3 years ago I would not have dreamed of orchestrating this kind of endeavor. Where I am sitting today, I understand the importance of taking the time to live "now". In the last couple of months, our family goals have once again shifted, and my wife and I are once again "dreaming big" to see where we want to take our family. If we were not willing to "give it all up" in pursuit of a bigger dream that we all share as a family, we would easily be able to sink into a comfortable, known, safe lifestyle that would not really challenge us as a family. I have done it before on my blog and I am going to do it again now. Read the following books/resources:

• The Dream Giver
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
• Tim Ferris
• The Purpose Driven Life
• The Greatness Guide
• The Prayer of Jabez

After reading through the above resources ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I really want to achieve out of life?
• What legacy do I want to leave for my kids?
• What legacy do I want to leave for others?
• What am I currently trying to handle that I should be forgetting about completely?
• What am I currently holding onto that could potentially hinder me from achieving my goals?
• What are my goals?
• How can I start truly "living" today?

Answering the questions above could be the start of a new path for your entire life. You have to be able to embrace the unknown with courage, remembering as the Prayer Of Jabez says, in the places you feel the most uncomfortable, is where the potential for growth is the greatest!!

Live and Develop With Passion!!!

Next week I am going to be issuing a contest that anyone who reads my blog will have the opportunity to participate in. Start spreading the word and tell your friends to keep an eye out, as the prizes are awesome!!

Develop With Passion

Was just listening to one of my favorite Newsboys songs this morning and I thought I would share some of the lyrics:

Stay strong
You are not lost
Come on and fix your eyes ahead
There's a new dawn to light our day, our day
We've gotta stay strong
You and I run
For the prize that lies ahead
We've come too far to lose our way, our way

Get up, there's further to go
Get up, there's more to be done
Get up, this witness is sure
Get up, this race can be won
This race can be won

Good Advice if you ask me!!

Develop With Passion!!

Hot on the heels of the Toronto course completion, one of the attendees (Michael Sevestre) just emailed me with a small update that fixes the issue on trying to reapply the macro to the name of the context when it is now inheriting from a base context class.

Thanks Michael, it is greatly appreciated!!

The update is below:

Imports System

Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Module CodeEditor

    Public Sub ReplaceSpacesInTestNameWithUnderscores()
        If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return
        Dim wrCS As Boolean = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value

        Try
            DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = False
            Dim selection As TextSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)
            Dim index As Integer

            selection.SelectLine()
            If selection.Text = "" Then Return

            Dim methodIndex As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf("public void ")
            Dim classIndex As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf("public class ")
            Dim implementIndex As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf(":")

            If (methodIndex < 0 AndAlso classIndex < 0) Then Return

            index = CType(IIf(methodIndex >= 0, methodIndex, classIndex), Integer)

            Dim prefix As String = CType(IIf(methodIndex >= 0, "public void ", "public class "), String)
            Dim whiteSpace As String = selection.Text.Substring(0, index)
            prefix = whiteSpace + prefix

            Dim description As String = selection.Text.Replace(prefix, String.Empty)

            'Find the ":" at the end of the line if defines
            Dim suffix As String = String.Empty
            If (implementIndex >= 0) Then
                suffix = selection.Text.Substring(implementIndex).Trim()
                description = description.Replace(suffix, String.Empty)
                suffix = String.Format(" {0}", suffix)
            End If

            description = description.Trim
            Dim text As String = prefix + description.Replace(" ", "_").Replace("'", "_") + suffix + vbCrLf
            selection.Delete()
            selection.Insert(text)
            selection.LineUp()
            selection.LineUp()
            selection.SelectLine()
            If selection.Text.Trim = "{" Or selection.Text.Trim = "}" Or selection.Text.Trim = "" Then
                If selection.Text.Trim = "{" Or selection.Text.Trim = "}" Then
                    selection.Insert(selection.Text.Replace(vbCrLf, "") + vbCrLf)
                ElseIf selection.Text.Trim = "" Then
                    selection.Delete()
                End If
            End If         
            selection.EndOfLine()
        Catch ex As Exception
            MsgBox(ex.Message)
        Finally
            DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = wrCS
        End Try
    End Sub
End Module

Just flew in yesterday afternoon from an amazing week and a half in Toronto. This was one of the first trips in a while that my wife and I went without the kids! They had a great time hanging out with both sets of Grandparents.

We flew into Toronto last Wednesday (the 14th) and we spent most of the day just walking around Toronto trying to get a feel for the place. This was my first time back to Toronto in 15 years and my wifes first time there ever!!

On Thursday I jumped into DevTeach to give 2 presentations :

• Applied Domain Driven Design
• Generics - They're not just about collections

The feedback from the sessions was awesome, and I got to spend some time catching up with people I have not talked to in a while.

On Friday, I spent the day pair presenting with Scott for the post-con workshop on Behavior Driven Development. I feel like the workshop went well, lots of lessons learned, but each course only gets better!! That same evening my wife and I went to "Medieval Times"!!! I purchased the Royalty package, so we got to sit right in the front row to witness all the action up close. In reality, the seating is laid out so well that you will be able to get a good viewpoint from any part of the arena. It was an absolute blast. The food was amazing, and the presentation itself was fabulous. We have made it a point to now try and see Medieval Times in each location where it is actually delivered (which is only a small set of locations)!!!

Saturday we spent the day walking and shopping. Checking out markets was fun, and eating in restaurants without the kids running around our feet was quite a surreal experience!!

On Sunday the 18th we left our hotel room at 8:00AM in the morning to go and spend the day taking a guided tour of Niagara Falls. This was definitely an unforgettable experience. Taking part in the Maid of the Mist tour is a memory that I am sure will be etched into both of our minds forever. We also got to spend a little bit of time checking out Clifton Hills, which had lots of fun amusement rides and shops!! The day finished off with a guided wine tasting at a local vineyard.

The week of the 19th was an extremely busy week, as I was delivering another Nothin But .Net Course at the Marriott Bloor Yorkville!! It was myself and 11 other attendees, and the week was an absolute blast. The amount of information that we managed to cover was staggering and I am sure that everyone involved had a great time!! One of the highlights of the week was when my wife came in and presented the class with T - Shirts that said the following on the front:

"I survived Jean-Paul Boodhoo's .Net Bootcamp!!!"

Going forward, we are going to absolutely have to make sure that everyone gets a T-Shirt!!

We are now back in Calgary, we have been reunited with the kids, and I have a couple of weeks of heads down crazy codin to do before the next course in Vancouver.

God Bless and,

Develop With Passion!!

Well, I guess I'll know for next time how many days it takes for me to get 79 responses for a freebie giveaway!! The 3 winners just got sent their amazon gift credits. And yes, the 79th email just came in a couple of hours ago!!

Tell your friends, tell your coworkers. This is far from the last freebie of the quarter!!

Develop with Passion!!

Seeing the response from the Dream Giver giveaway, I thought I would try something a little bit different in an effort to get people to potentially look at updating their book library.

Self education is an absolute must if you want to remain current in this industry, and IMHO there is no better resource that blogs and a couple of books to help you hit the ground running.

If you are feeling like your book library could use a bit of an upgrade then email me. I will issue an $70 Amazon gift card to the:

• 77th, 78th, and 79th respondents

Develop With Passion!!

Everyone who knows me will know that I can tend to ramble on about the topic of this post. I am a big proponent of trying to encourage people to stretch and really push to achieve dreams that they have identified that they want to see come to fruition.

I could ramble on about this topic and share my own thoughts and ideas with respect to how I personally went about making dreams a reality for myself and my family; instead I would like to share a video presentation from an amazing computer science professor named Randy Pausch.

I can't stress enough the importance of outlook with respect to approaching every situation. This man is dying of pancreatic cancer and he still has a passion and fire that he wants to use to light up the lives of the people that he comes into contact with.

Though I don't agree with all of the points that he makes in the video, the man is truly an inspirational teacher, and the life lessons he has learned to get to where he is are truly awesome.

I have to say a special thanks to Perry Neal for taking the time to send me the link. I watched the video on my second monitor at work, and then went home that same evening and watched it again with my wife.

Three points in the video really stuck a chord with me and I hope they will resonate with you long after you watch the video:

• Brick walls are not only there to make us realize how much we want to achieve a goal, they are also there to keep out the others who are not willing to break through to their achievements.
• You have to decide whether you are a Tigger or an Eeyore. Your outlook on life and the situations that you are placed in will greatly affect the outcome and potential realization of your own dreams.
• As someone who wants to impact kids with respect to getting them fired up about potential careers in software, the ALICE program looks like a phenomenal resource.

This video is an absolute must see, and I think you could potentially look at transforming your life if you allow some of the ideas and techniques this man is sharing to permeate your very core!!

Enjoy.

I was just listening to one of my favorite podcasts (sorry, not anything remotely technical) and the title for the newest track caught my eye as it is definitely something that I try to encourage everyone to do:

The title of the mix is Press on with the following description:

Press on to start, press on to keep from stopping

Good advice for anyone who wants to find satisfaction in what they do.

Develop With Passion!!

This past Alt.Net experience was amazing as always. I am continually blown away by the level of passion that is exhibited by all attendees. Every single person in attendance comes ready to share and learn.

I enjoyed talking with a lot of new faces and spending (too short) time with friends that I have not seen for a while.

It is particularly awesome for me to see the growth that is occurring in people as I reconnect with them after 1 year of not chatting with them. It is truly amazing the distance a person can travel with a bit of focus and determination.

Even though the conference was going on, I got to spend a considerable amount of time with my family also. On the evening of the second night, we went out to go and see the Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The movie was excellent, and served as a great way to break up the Alt .Net event for me.

If you are thinking about attending an Alt.Net event, I encourage you to not hesitate to attend/organize one in your local area. This is not a community of people who think they are better, it is a community of people who are continually trying to become better software developers. The ideas and thoughts are an aggregate of concepts that are not yet considered mainstream by a majority of the .Net community. It is particularly encouraging for me to see the increased level of Microsoft involvement at each successive Alt .Net event.

I made a comment that it was particularly interesting that the venue (Digipen) happens to be one of the leaders in churning out top quality innovative game developers. The perfect place to host a group of people who are striving for innovation and creativity with respect to problem solving in the software realm.

Hopefully I will see some of you at an Alt .Net event in the future!!

Develop with Passion!!

Having recommended this book to a couple of friends I thought I would take the time to write my 2 cents on what could potentially be a life changing book for many people. While reading this book it continually reminded me of the wonders that God has in store when you step out of your comfort zone to follow "Your Big Dream".

For the people reading this blog who do not care much for the Christian influence in the book, don't let that discourage you from what could be an amazing read and inspiration. I am positive that you will still be able to read the book and empathize with a lot with the trials and tribulations of the main character as he pursues his big dream.

Read the following blurb that will hopefully get the engines cranked for you to go out and read the book:

_________________________________________________________________

Are you living your dream— or just living your life?

Welcome to a little story about a very big idea. This compelling modern-day parable tells the story of Ordinary, who dares to leave the Land of Familiar to pursue his Big Dream.

You, too, have been given a Big Dream. One that can change your life. One that the Dream Giver wants you to achieve. Does your Big Dream seem hopelessly out of reach? Are you waiting for something or someone to make your dream happen?

Then you’re ready for The Dream Giver.

Let Bruce Wilkinson show you how to rise above the ordinary, conquer your fears, and overcome the obstacles that keep you from living your Big Dream.

You were made for this. Now it’s time to begin your journey.

________________________________________________________________

The first 3 people to email me with interest in this book will receive an amazon gift certificate in the amount required to purchase the book.

Are you ready to begin you journey?

So many people I talk with ask the question “How do you do it?”. This question always suprises me as I don’t think that anything that I am doing is all that magical. I just try to work hard every day and improve upon my previous days efforts.

One of the things that I encourage people to do is take the time to sit down and really ask themselves some difficult questions:

• What do I want to achieve over the course of the next year?
• How will I know when I have attained my goal?
• What do I have to do to make it happen?

The very act of writing down goals and keeping them in front of you (literally, post-it note them to your bathroom mirror) can be a very empowering act. It can help narrow your focus. Every decision you make can be filtered through the “Will this help me achieve my goal?” filter.

When my wife and I were just married (at the wee age of 18!!) we did this exact thing. Keep in mind that at the time both of us were working in a dollar store and I had not even thought critically about what I wanted to do for a long term career. We sat down and bullet listed a set of items/goals that seemed completely unachievable at the time. We dreamt big, and did not let our surroundings or current situation limit our ability to really stretch for what we thought the Lord had planned for us.

With goals put in place we started the long path of making the dreams a reality. This is the spot where a lot of people get discouraged. Here is a famous quote that I find quite inspiring:

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work” – Thomas Edison

I believe that something worth having should not come easy, you need to work to make it happen. Do you want to have an amazing marriage? You will need to put the time and effort in to ensure that you and your spouse are close. Do you want to be a good parent? You will need to put the time and effort into making it happen. Do you want to excel in your chosen field of work? You will need to… what? Put in the time and effort to make it happen.

Don’t let the current microwave culture con you into thinking that results are instant. They should not be. For all of the work that I have put in personally to establish a solid career as a software developer it is only within the last 2 years that I have started to realize the fruits of some of that hard work and effort. The entire time my wife and I have been reminding each other of the goals that we set and based our decisions around those goals and a lot of prayer!!

Just before the new year we sat down and came up with another list!! Our previous list now retired to the pile of dreams that we were blessed and courageous enough to follow. I was speaking with a friend yesterday who made an interesting comment:

“You seem to regularly take on more stress than most other people would ever think to take on”

I corrected him and made this statement. I don’t feel like I am stressed out that much. In all honesty, the times that I feel stressed out almost always constitute a failure to plan on my part. I did say that what I do take on regularly is: Challenge and Risk. I am not afraid of the opportunity to fall flat on my face taking a risk, because I now that it is in the times of struggle/pain that growth happens.

I encourage you to take some risks in 2008, dream big, and see what happens when you step out of your comfort zone!!

In November I had the wonderful honor and opportunity to record a podcast with Craig Shoemaker of Polymorphic Podcast fame. There was not any one specific topic talked about but the conversation was definitely a lot of fun.

He has titled the show “Develop with Passion like Jean-Paul Boodhoo”!! If passion is what came across in the interview then the interview was a definite success.

Develop With Passion!!

A new year has sprung up and I am fired up to help people “Develop with Passion” for the 2008 year.

The blogging front is going to be fairly quiet for me for the first part of the month. With a combination of client deadlines and a private training course I am going to be pretty busy.

This year looks to be a year of exciting challenges and adventures for my company and in particular the Nothin But * Series of courses.

I am happy to announce that already this year 3 new courses are going to be introduced into the mix that are delivered by people other than myself.

The 3 new course offerings are:

• Nothin But WPF – Presented By Wendy Friedlander
• Nothin But Agile Project Management – Presented By Jonathan Rasmusson
• Nothin But .Net v3.5 – Presented By Donald Belcham

More information will be coming on these courses in the following little while (within the week) as 2 of the courses are going to be running in the March timeframe.

As far as training goes for myself, I am going to continue delivering the Nothin But .Net series of deep dive bootcamps over the course of the year, coupled with maintaining my 3 weeks of consulting a month.

I am looking forward to another amazing set of opportunities to be used by the Lord to bless people, and help them progress along the path of being a “software artist”.

I have some pretty big “Pie in the sky” ideas for this year that I won’t share at this time, keep posted as I am really excited about one of them in particular.

I pray that God Blesses you with an amazing 2008 year and remember:

Develop With Passion!!

Everyone who knows me knows what a big keyboard junkie I am. When I am typing on my MacBook keyboard and not my natural (or datahand). There is not Insert key that I can use when in ReSharper.

I know that there are utilities to remap keys to emulate the insert key, but I am not going to get into those.

Here is the keyboard sequence to get to the Generate Code dialog (normally accessed by pressing ALT-INS):

ALT – R – C – G

Now here is the funny thing. After just using this sequence for a couple of hours I find it much faster than ALT-INS. I think this is because even though there are more keys to hit, the flight path of my hands on the natural keyboard is greatly decreased because I don’t have to move my right hand off home row. When I want to hit the insert key on my natural keyboard I have to move my right hand (this could also be due to poor keyboard technique on my part).

Nonetheless, the nice thing about this sequence is now I am using the exact same key sequence when I am on my natural keyboard and my macbook pro keyboard!!

Develop With Passion

The title says it all. Looks like I will be prepping a new VMWare image in a couple of hours!!

Now the JetBrains people have a good target to aim at with getting a release out that supports the RTM of VS2008!!

Develop With Passion

An article , that David Truxall was kind enough to leave a comment about, explains beautifully what I was trying to convey in my Tale of two sons story.

If you have a mentor, or someone you look up to as an expert in an area that you currently feel lacking. Maybe this article can give you some insight into the process that developed their abilities to the level you are aspiring to.

http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945

The following is one of my favourite excerpts from the article:

A Proliferation of Prodigies
The one thing that all expertise theorists agree on is that it takes enormous effort to build these structures in the mind. Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others.

According to this view, the proliferation of chess prodigies in recent years merely reflects the advent of computer-based training methods that let children study far more master games and to play far more frequently against master-strength programs than their forerunners could typically manage. Fischer made a sensation when he achieved the grandmaster title at age 15, in 1958; today's record-holder, Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine, earned it at 12 years, seven months.

As another commenter reminded me, Thomas Edison once said -

"genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration"

Develop with passion!!

Having had a lot of conversations with people over the last couple of weeks on strategies that have worked in my life to help ensure that I maintained my focus, I thought I would share a tip that my Dad gave me a long time ago.

“There will always be someone who knows more than you do”

Such a simple phrase, but it has had a huge impact on the way that I, in my own life, have dealt with the issue of personal development. If I don’t have to worry about “keeping up with the Joneses” that means that I can truly focus on improving myself for the sake of personal satisfaction and nothing else. I can be free from playing technology monopoly and only take a look at bringing on board technologies if and when I see a role and advantage to be gained by integrating them into my work.

I can read blogs by people who are doing cool stuff and have it be an empowering thing and not a stumbling block to my own creativity. If I know as much as I know right now, I will know more tomorrow. Why? Because now the only person I need to challenge is myself. I can leverage the skills of people I have been surrounded by to be my sounding board for potentially wacky ideas that I come up with. The whole time, I am honing my craft and expanding the way my mind looks at solving problems that it is presented with.

(This story is purely fictional, although I am sure that in the course of history it is very likely that something similar happened)

One day a husband and wife were blessed with a double miracle in the form of 2 identical twin sons.

Within the first 4 years of their lives it had become evident that God had blessed the boys with a raw talent in the arena of sports. In order not to pressure them, and to ensure that each son was given the opportunity to pursue their passion, the parents decided to see how these natural abilities would evolve over the course of the years.

Up until high school, both boys naturally participated in the same sports clubs and because of their God given gifts, they were able to excel to a level that eclipsed that of most of their peers. Fast forward a couple of years to high school.

In high school one of the brothers decided to drop out of sports and follow an interest in business studies. In the meaning his brother was relentlessly pursuing the improvement of his physical abilities. His average day consisted of the following routine:

• 5:00AM – Wake up for 30 minute jog to the swimming pool
• 5:40 – 6:40AM – 1 hour intense swimming
• 12:00PM – 12:40PM – Gym session at school
• 4:00PM – 6:00PM – Gym session at local YMCA
• …

You get the point. This brother was taking the “time” and “effort” to hone a gift he was given. The other brother had found a new passion and although not given a natural gift for business, he was devoting his time to learn everything he could about business studies.

Fast forward 10 years. The brother who followed the athletic path, excelled above and beyond both his peers and his brother in the arena of athletics. His brother, who was still gifted in athletics, was still at a slightly higher athletic level than that of the average athlete, but he was an order of magnitude of skill lower than his brother and even other people who had not been given a gift for athletics but had spent years improving their physical makeup and developing themselves as athletes. He was now an accomplished businessman and had build and developed several successful businesses once he had graduated high school because it was something that he trained to do, and improved on continually.

What is the point of this story?? A lot of people ask me the question “How Do You Do It?” My first response to them is “What?”. They will continue by saying things like :

• Maintain a healthy marriage for 11 years
• Raise a family of 4 kids
• Blog
• Speak
• Excel in particular areas of .Net

My answer to them is plain and very simple. Why is software any different that any other skill that a person chooses to pursue. I absolutely believe that there are people who are born with a natural gift to be able to write software. A gift left unopened is still a gift unrealized. If you are one of many developers who has acknowledged that software is a craft that you can choose to hone like any other skill; you will see that all these people out there who you currently consider as “experts” are no different than yourself. The only difference is that lots of the forerunners in the field have chosen to hone their skills in one or more areas to a level that helps them stand out from the crowd.

What does it mean to hone your craft in software development? In all honesty I truly feel that first and foremost it means writing a lot of code. Getting out of your comfort zone and solving a problem you have solved dozens of times before in a completely different way. Finding a group of peers who can challenge you in a friendly and competitive way to raise your own level of expectations for yourself.

There truly is very little magic when it comes to looking at anyone who has been able to excel in their field. From the people that I look upto, they all share the trait of pursuing excellence in the craft that they have chosen for their careers. Be that software development or not.

I had to laugh a little. The one blog post that I wrote this year which also generated the most comments is the only one with a hint of negative sound to it!!

I have to stress one thing and people need to hear me when I say this. I am completely in acknowledgment of the fact that people make mistakes. As a sinner saved by grace, I am reminded of this fact daily. I make mistakes on a daily basis. If and when I get the opportunity to meet you, you will find that I wear my emotions on my sleeve and am extremely passionate about what I do for a living, and because in this past year I have been blessed with the opportunity to influence others on a larger scale it has raced to the forefront of my mind the importance of integrity in the role of leaders.

In my last post, people were quick to jump on the fact that I seemed to be singling out some people in the community with the comments I was making. And that is definitely not the case. Let me also quickly state that regardless of how people read into that last post I in no way hold myself in any higher regard than anyone else.

What I do hold myself to is striving to daily achieve a level of excellence for myself in the arena of software development. I strive to foster a community that cares as much about quality of character as much as it does quality of the code that is produced by a development team. I am not against people being out in the community sharing information that they have found to be useful for themselves. I personally feel that everyone who is out there sharing information should be letting people know that whatever knowledge they are sharing is based on their current level of knowledge and is information that, in my opinion, should be validated by a group of peers who are able to challenge the ideas that they are presenting.

What I am asking for is for people to stop worrying about being politically correct (good point that was brought up from an attendee of my last course) when it comes to challenging “the experts” whether it be me or anyone else. I want developers to be more honest with themselves and the people they are engaging about the skillsets they have. I want developers to not have to feel stressed about the fact that a position is asking for skillsets X,Y,Z and they only have strong knowledge in one of the 3. For myself, I have found it such a freeing experience to be able to speak open and honestly with both clients and peers about where my skills do and do not lie. This completely changed the landscape of the interview process for me. I can be completely honest about what I do know and what topics I personally feel very strong in. I can also,be brutally honest about what I don’t know and what is currently not on my radar to look at in the immediate future. If one of these areas is a skillset that will make or break the deal, then so be it. I will have been given the opportunity to meet a new set of people and the decision will now be in their court and they will have been given information in its rawest form to make a decision that benefits them and their current set of needs.

What is the point I am trying to make in short?:

( IsABlogger() && HasAnMVP() && HasDoneLotsOfPresentations()) != IsAnExpert()

All that the above points identify is that an individual has all of the prerequisites that need to be in place to be recognized as a community influencer. It does not make them an expert. Expert, IMHO, is a very relative term. If you bring me onto a project and I am not able to deliver effectively with your team, then it does not matter how I was selling myself to the interview team, the developers that I am working with will be able to weed me out quicker than management potentially could.

For myself and others (involved with community or not) I would like to see us be more honest with ourselves and the people we come into contact with on a daily basis about where our strengths and weaknesses lie in the realm of development. I would like developers to be able to drop the facades and set client expectations early in a very realistic way. I think if this were done on a more consistent basis, it would make for a much less stressful situation all around. 

As for people who were asking me to name names, I am not going to. Part of my responsibility as someone who has witnessed and experienced this is to challenge and have conversations with the parties in question. All of these conversations that I have had over the year have ended in positive outcomes. It does not negate the fact the practice is there and there are changes that can be made to completely eliminate it from our everyday development culture. I would hope that if and when I start making claims about myself that are not true, somebody would be brave enough to step up to the plate and personally challenge me about it. Maybe that would be all I need to put my focus on integrity back into check.

The title for this post comes from a comment that Scott Hanselman made at the Alt.Net conference in Austin. There are two ways that people lead:

• By Addition
• By Multiplicity

In my opinion, the community at large would be greatly enhanced if more of the thought leaders were focused on growing other leaders in the field, as opposed to just adding followers behind them.

I went on a bit of a rant last week in front of my class where I expressed my disgust at the degradation of integrity that I have witnessed over the course of this last year. I am talking about developers and consultants who are out there as thought leaders, who are committing nothing less than career fraud by selling themselves into positions that they are not qualified to be in. With skillsets that they definitely do not possess.

I cannot change these people, they will continue to either make these mistakes and get caught in their own lies (the nets are closing in). Or they will see the error of their ways and make the necessary (often extremely difficult) corrective actions to ensure that they are walking in integrity.

One thing that continually impresses me is the amount of developer talent that is waiting on the sidelines getting ready to express their viewpoints and thoughts on software development with the rest of the industry. These are people who may not yet be regarded as the “experts”, but they are humble, willing to learn and possess extremely critical thinking. All it takes is for one person who can take the time to grow these people as leaders. Once this happens, then these people will most likely go out and do the same thing, start to grow other leaders. This is something that can spark a community (and I’m not just speaking dev in this scenario) in ways that you could not imagine.

I am hoping that I can continue to lead by multiplicity in the areas that I am given that opportunity. With that in mind (and hopefully not putting too much pressure on them) here are some people that I am going to be watching with interest over the next couple of years to see what their impacts on the development community (and for some, the world) will be:

• Terry Thibodeau
• Mo Khan
• Adam Alinauskas
• Sean Feldman
• Scott Cowan
• Jim Bonnie
• Brian Donahue

Just so no one feels left out, I have met lots of people this year that I think have the potential to become community thought leaders. The people above are just those people whose blogs I know about. I did not mention the people who are already blogging who have a considerable amount of buzz around their materials already.

If you yourself are in a position of leadership (trust me, we all are in some capacity) I am encouraging you to grow a culture and community of leadership by multiplicity. There is nothing more satisfying than knowing that when you lead my multiplication, in one small form, you are leaving one shape of a legacy behind you.

Last week was without question the most amazing iteration of my Nothin But .Net course that I have had the blessing of delivering.

What made last week so different than all the other times that I have taught the course? The level of interaction and knowledge sharing that was happening between all of the people who came to attend.

People truly were able to let go of any facades that they were holding onto and were able to truly help each other through what was (I feel) a turning point for many people with respect to both their outlook on life and their careers.

One of the high points for me was when we had taken a supper break at a local Wendys. I was standing in line getting ready to pay, I looked out into the restaurant and every single person was sitting with someone who they did not work with. Keep in mind, that there were several companies who attended this course (one company had 5 people in attendance). This further solidified in my mind that people were truly there to share their own experiences with trying to get into this “Alt.Net” world. I was just the vessel to allow the communication to start. Once people got talking, I got to bask in the glow of the results of the amazingly high levels of interaction that happened.

One of the other things that I started doing last week was the pairing hotseat. If someone did not want to just watch me type, and they felt that they could “make the test pass”, they were welcome to come up into the pairing hotseat and take a stab at getting the test to pass. If they took too long, they were booted out, and somebody else took their place. Because of the comfort level in the room, with no-one needing to prove that they knew more or less than they did, it made for a very fluid experience.

I know that I said that I would no longer post about this kind of stuff on my blog, but you know what, I have to post about it. For this season in my life, this course and the impact that I have been able to have on both the professional and personal lives of people that I come in contact with is something that I know has been a direct blessing from the Lord.

A quote that I just received from a recent attendee sums it up very nicely:

“Reading other’s comments about the course being a career and life changing event may sound ‘mushy’ and exaggerated at the very least, but until someone attends JP’s ‘Nothing but …’ course they will not realize that it may in fact be true”

I wake up each day and thank God for this opportunity and this season. I don’t know if I will be still doing this type of training a year from now, but during this season I am going to deliver 110% of myself when I am engaged in these training sessions so that I can hopefully continue to have a powerful impact on the lives of people that I encounter.

Since the last time I published this, things have changed a little. With the addition of some code from students in the last 2 classes, it definitely works a lot more fluid that it did in its original iteration:

Imports System

Imports System.Windows.Forms

Imports EnvDTE

Imports EnvDTE80

Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Module CodeEditor

Sub ReplaceSpacesInTestNameWithUnderscores()

If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then Return

Dim wrVB As Boolean = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "Basic").Item("WordWrap").Value

Dim wrPT As Boolean = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "PlainText").Item("WordWrap").Value

Dim wrCS As Boolean = DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value

Try

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "Basic").Item("WordWrap").Value = False

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "PlainText").Item("WordWrap").Value = False

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = False

Dim selection As TextSelection = CType(DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection(), EnvDTE.TextSelection)

If selection.Text = "" Then Return

Dim prefix As String = "public void "

Dim index As Integer = selection.Text.IndexOf(prefix)

If index < 0 Then

Return

End If

Dim description As String = selection.Text.Replace(prefix, String.Empty).Trim

selection.Text = prefix + description.Replace(" ", "_").Replace("'", "_") + vbCrLf

Catch ex As Exception

Finally

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "Basic").Item("WordWrap").Value = wrVB

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "PlainText").Item("WordWrap").Value = wrPT

DTE.Properties("TextEditor", "CSharp").Item("WordWrap").Value = wrCS

End Try

End Sub

End Module

Enjoy.

Since I have been asked for these quite a few times, I thought I would oblige and give these out. You can find below the links for both my Resharper Live Templates and File templates.

Enjoy:

• Live Templates
• File Templates

It is 3:00AM in the morning and even though the last week has been one of the most intense (and satisfying) iterations of my Nothin But .Net course to date, I am sitting here thinking about  some of the amazing conversations that occurred over the course of the week.

One of the things that I don’t do a good job of hiding is my passion with respect to pursuit of excellent in your craft. With respect to the world of software development I personally feel that people fall into one of two categories. That of a software developer and a software artist.

IMHO, I truly believe that more developers would feel a lot greater satisfaction with their job if they took the time to exercise the creative sides of their brain. In our microwave culture, we are not satisfied unless we can get things happening now!

Like great artists of history (and present), building good software that is elegant and most of all maintainable, is more than just understanding the concepts of the language(s) that you are targeting. You need to be able to leverage the creative side of your mind to figure out how you can use the building blocks of the language and come up with concepts that can mirror/model the problem domain in a way that you can’t be taught just by googling.

A software artist takes time to hone their craft. They realize that the creative side of programming is more important that the language(s) or tools that they are using to implement the solution. Like an artist they take time to cultivate and grow their own unique style daily. Two software artists given the same problem to solve and no google to read will most likely come up with elegant solutions to the problem, but I would wager as to whether the solutions would look anywhere near the same. Why, because now their own personal styles are coming into play and they are flexing their creative and technical muscles to solve the problems at hand.

I challenge you this week (and going forward) to remember that creating software is more than:

• Learning a language
• Learning some cool tools (NHibernate,Castle,….)
• Learning design patterns

Once you have a certain base of knowledge built up, the trick is not to challenge yourself to not just churn out the same old code day after day. Let your brain do what God designed it to do and let it run. Let it first identify the box and then figure out if there are creative ways that you can look at the problem to see if you can come up with a solution to the problem that you (or anyone else) has already come up with.

Develop With Passion.

I received this question a couple of days ago that I thought I would quickly take the time to respond to a question:

“At work over the past few weeks we’ve been watching your patterns talks on dnrTV.  We’ve found them really enlightening (we’re implementing some of them as I write this), but what has really amazed some of us is your use of ReSharper.  We have a printout of the default keymap for ReSharper, but we notice that you do some things using the keyboard that we would love to be able to do (and, in fact, didn’t even know were options in ReSharper).  One co-worker surmises that you have mapped your own keyboard shortcuts.  Is this the case, or are you just very knowledgeable of all of the shortcuts that ReSharper provides out of the box.  Either way, do you have any sort of keyboard mapping that you would be willing to share?  We’re always looking into ways to be better  - and what better way than to have a tool do all of the heavy lifting for you!!”

Here is the trick to getting really proficient with not just ReSharper, but also any and every program that windows throws at you. Start using the ALT key more!! With respect to the stuff that I am doing in ReSharper, let me confess that I have not mapped any extra keybinding other than the ones that come out of the box during the install.. Since 1.0 of ReSharper I have been leveraging , and will continue to use, the IntelliJ keyboard mappings. Before you can start leveraging the ALT key more effectively with ReSharper there is one thing you will have to do (you don’t have to, but it will save you an extra “R” in the keyboard sequences). If you are using VS2005 and you have both Refactor and ReSharper menu items (the Refactor menu is provided by the default install of VS2005, and will only show up if you are in a code file) you will need to remove the Refactor menu from your toolbar. If you want to get rid of it for good follow these steps:

• Right click on the toolbar in VS and choose customize
• Select the Commands tab
• Click the Rearrange commands button
• Ensure that the Menu Bar option is selected and choose the Refactor menu from the drop down list.
• The Controls list should now be populated with all of the Refactor menu items.
• Highlight the first item in the Controls list and hit ALT- D (delete).
• Take care when deleting the last item as the list will automatically populate with the next set of controls from another menu item that you may not want to delete.
• Click the close button on the dialog, and click the close button on the main dialog.
• Voila, the Refactor menu item should be gone from your toolbar!!

Here are a couple of ReSharper key sequences that I use all of the time (I’ll leave it up to you to experiment):

• ALT -> R -> N -> Enter – Create new class from file template template. This works because the first template in my list is the class template.
• ALT -> R -> N -> I – Create new interface from file template.
• ALT -> R -> N -> F – Create new TestFixture from file template
• ALT -> R -> N -> M – Create new MockTestFixture from file template
• ALT -> R -> W -> D – Bring up the TODO exlorer
• ALT -> R -> O – Bring up ReSharper options
•  

With respect to the TestFixture and MockTestFixture files templates, these are just one of many custom file templates that I use to help me get off the ground faster. I leverage ReSharper file templates a lot as it helps me start with code files that are much leaner than the studio counterparts.

Using the ALT key more will allow you to drop the mouse more than you think and start leveraging features directly from the keyboard.

Develop with Passion!!

As I said the other day, I finally bit the bullet and purchased an awesome MacBook pro!!

From day 1 (in the Mac world) I have been utilizing VMWare Fusion as my virtualization software of choice. This is a list of things that I should have done before I made the switch from my windows VM’s to VM Ware Fusion.

• Make sure that when you create your images in VMWare Workstation, that you select the option to split the disk files into 2GB increments. This is imperative as ,if you are like me, and need to run the images on both Mac and Windows machines, then the only file system that you will be able to use effectively with both (without extra tools that are not officially supported) is the FAT32 files system.
• To further emphasize point one, if you don’t check off the option (which I did not do when creating my original images), you will most likely fail to be able to copy the images to a FAT32 drive as the virtual disks will most likely be over the 4GB file size limit for a FAT32 file.
• Don’t copy the original images onto a Mac partition which can allow for larger files sizes as once you copy it onto the Mac, you won’t be able to run the VMWare utility to split the original disk file back into 2GB increments, as this utility is not present in Fusion. Keep the images on an XP/Vista host and run the VMWare Workstation disk manager utility that can be used to convert the virtual disk file from a single large file to multiple files of a specified size. Once you have completed this step, you should be able to successfully copy the images onto a FAT32 partition, circumventing the 4GB file size limit.

…. As an aside, I made all sorts of mistakes when migrating my images to work with both Mac and Windows. Of course, this is ultimately how you learn the right way to do it!!

Just as a side note, I think I seriously messed things up when opening the images multiple times on both windows and Mac. It got to the point where I had to open up both the vmx file and the vmdk files to ensure that pathing issues were not present.

It just so happened that somewhere during the course of flipping constantly between a windows host and the mac host, the paths of some of the files got munged up. Once I edited the files manually to resolve the path issues, it was all good.

Just in case any of you newly acquainted with a Mac and Fusion experience this issue, you may need to check to see if there are pathing issues in either of the sets of files I mentioned.

That last part in the title is to indicate that for me, this is something that has changed several times over the past year with a change happening even within the last month.

Let me stress the fact that I am a big automated build junkie, and am not really even a fan of compiling from within studio. To that end I do the majority of my work using studio + ReSharper as the editor, and NAnt (currently) as the compile/test tool coupled with FinalBuilder as my deployment tool.

Here is a snapshot of a root directory of one of my current projects:

Let’s break each of these items down so that there is a bit of explanation behind each one. Don’t worry about the .svn folder or the folders with underscores in front of them.

The config dir

This directory contains all of the files related to the configuration of the application. Things that I typically put in this directory are:

• app.config file template (if you are not sure of the concept of file templates check out my NAnt starter series).
• NHibernate mapping files (typically placed in a folder called mapping)
• Log4Net config file template
• Boo file template to configure Windsor

The docs dir

This directory should be fairly self explanatory, as it contains documentation artifacts related to the project. These can be things like stories, diagrams etc.

The lib dir

This directory contains all of the third party libraries that will need to be deployed to the client/server machine. Keep in mind that 3rd party libraries could also be app specific versions of in house libraries that you share between projects.

The src dir

This directory contains all of the code related artifacts that belong to the project. This application usually consists of the following 2 root directories:

• app – Contains all of the code that will be compilable units that get deployed to production.

• test – Contains all of the code that is related to testing the code that will get deployed.

I often break the test directory down into different subdirectories to clearly identify the types of tests that are contained:

• unit
• integration
• ui

The src directory is organized in this structure so that I can quickly choose to ignore/include files that I want when I am compiling for either test or deployment.

The tools dir

This directory contains all of the supporting third party libraries that are there to serve the purposes of build automation, testing etc. Libraries that you might expect to find in here are:

• NAnt
• MBUnit/NUnit
• NCover
• NCoverExplorer
• RhinoMocks

These libraries are essential during the build process, but they do not need to be present on the deployment machine as they are there to support the needs of automating and testing the application.

The local.properties.xml file

This file is there to account for the differences in individual machine configurations without cluttering the build file with knowledge of each specific developers machine in a team environment. Machine specific settings are kept in this file that each developer maintains their own copy of, and the settings in the file get leveraged during the build process to carry out the build automation tasks on each developers machine.

You will also note, that in the above diagram, I place my solution file right at the root so that it is quickly accessible and can be opened right from the checkout unit.

As you can imagine this physical folder structure does not correlate to what you would see in studio, as unfortunately, studio comes up with its own way to view your world.

In a latter post I’ll talk about how I have abandoned the notion of multiple projects inside of studio, in place of trusting developers to follow correct layer separation. This can be done, because once you stop using Studio as your build engine, a world of possibilities open up to how you go about laying out the physical code in your code base.

Why

The purpose for having this structure that I have outlined above is to have a completely atomic unit for your project. The goal being that someone new to the team, with a fresh install of the .Net framework (not even studio), should be able to check out the above project, make the appropriate machine specific changes to the local.properties.xml file, and run build.bat to compile and test the application. One of the directories that you don’t see in the image above, that is usually present on other apps that I write is the sql directory. As you can imagine, this directory contains all of the sql artifacts related to the project. Again, if a new developer checks out for the first time and tries to build/test, if there are databases to be created, they will be created, and then the code will compile and test.

Again, once you introduce the concept of build automation whether it be with NAnt, Rake etc, it opens the door and your mind to different possibilities with regards to how you go about laying out your project. No longer is your deployment model constrained to how you build your x number of projects in studio. You could have one physical project with 15 different folders that convey different namespaces/layers of the application (which you would originally have been using separate projects for) and you could choose in your build script to compile folders 1 – 5 into one assembly 6 -8 into another assembly etc. It is completely up to you.

There are so many other things that you can do when you start using this type of structure.

I was just reading a comment that someone who was using Fusion had an issue with the fact that you had to use the mouse when you switch input back to the VM.

This post is for you. When you bring up expose (F9) to switch between windows and you switch focus back to the windows VM (I am assuming you are not using Unity at this point), all you have to do is hit Command - G to force input back to the virtual machine.

This way you don’t have to reach for the mouse!!

As cool as I think OSX is, now that I have been exposed to QuickSilver, I find myself facing the same situation that I do when I am facing a VS installation without ReSharper. I can’t use it without it!!

I think that only people who have actually coded with ReSharper can appreciate what I mean by this comment!!

I am currently loving working on a Mac, but the one nagging thing that I miss is the fact that I can’t hit the ALT key and have all of the menu accessors enabled so that I can traverse the menu by hitting ALT – Followed by series of keystrokes. I much prefer ALT based navigation to having to memorize different shortcuts CTRL + Key or now Command + Key.

Am I missing something or is there no equivalent in OSX?

Well, I finally dished out and purchased a brand new MacBook Pro. And I am amazed at the simplicity of the OSX OS. Initially I was a little worried at the lack of keyboard support. This ended up being a relearning for me as I have been heavily reliant on the ALT key coming from the Windows world.

I am running both of my work and development windows VM’s inside the Mac using VMWare Fusion. This is a truly surreal experience that blurs the line between where the Mac ends and Windows begins.

I installed QuickSilver a couple of days ago, and I finally see what all of the fuss was about. QuickSilver is an amazing utility that is an absolute must have for a keyboard junkie like myself. Each of my VM’s has a copy of launchy and slickrun installed. One of the things that I found out was that once I had launched a program once in a VM, it was accessible using QuickSilver!! This means that I can now reboot my Mac, use QuickSilver to launch my VM’s and then furthermore use QuickSilver to launch apps within those VM’s. I will have to do a screencast soon to demonstrate some of this stuff!!

All in all, my first couple of days running on a Mac have been thoroughly impressive, and I look forward to the learning that I will have to go through in the next little while.

FYI: My vm’s seem to run much faster in Fusion on the Mac, than they did on either XP or Vista. I am guessing at the fact that the OS overhead is much less with OSX vs. Vista or XP.

I am chiming in late on this meme, but since James Kovacs and Jeff Palermo both tagged me I thought it wise to share my strategy for becoming a better developer over the next 6 months.

I have a lot of strategies that I try to follow in both my personal and professional life that I have found have allowed me to experience what, thus far, has been a very rewarding and enjoyable career.

• God’s Guidance.  First and foremost I have and will continue to ensure to ask for God’s guidance with regard to all of the decisions I make with regards to my career. I want to ensure that whatever I choose to pursue is something that allows me to open up new doors for sharing with other people about the wonders of God’s grace.

• Humility.  Being honest about my abilities has always let me keep in the forefront of my mind where my strengths and weaknesses lie with regards to software. Over the next 6 months I am going to continue to ensure that areas that I feel weak in “that are applicable to the current projects that I am working on” are the ones that I will try to develop further. Learning to stay focused and not get pulled in 20 different directions will allow people to assimilate new information much quicker. Identifying what is currently applicable for your learning will prevent the overwhelming feeling that can sometimes follow the release of new cool toys. It’s not that I don’t want to be aware of all of the new stuff. I just don’t want to waste my time on something that I can’t currently prove out in a production environment.

• Publishing Code. Over the next 6 months I plan to release a lot of source code examples that I think will serve as good reference materials for people who are wanting to get their hands on some stuff that demonstrates practically what it means to apply a lot of the techniques and strategies that have come out of the Agile development movement. The reason for doing this is twofold. I can start to share more with the community in a medium that works for me better than blog posts. I have been fairly lax at answering people’s emails as of late and I think that using this means of publishing will allow me to keep on my toes as some of the problems I am posed with are fairly interesting and would serve as good ways for me to sharpen my sword.

• Networking. This year has been an amazing year for me getting out there and meeting other like minded developers out of the scene that I am comfortable with. Being able to form relationships with people that I respect as developers provides me with a group of people who can potentially serve as sounding boards for ideas that I want to implement as well as mentors from who I can learn from. I have always felt that if you surround yourself by people who challenge your assumptions and truly make you think, that it elevates the level to which you can take your career.

• Teaching. Having the opportunity to teach courses this year has blessed our family in ways that I could not have imagined. Being able to spend a week with a new group of people every month and be a source of advanced training material has been a blast. I learn so much about development when I am teaching a Nothin But .Net course. No 2 courses have been the same, and the codebases that come out of each class vary greatly. The dynamic nature of the classes allows me to take the students wherever they want to go, which can be an interesting and challenging experience. Being able to pick up tricks and tidbits along the way from different sets of students has been great. For me, the reason I love teaching is that at the end of each week my brain is filled with new ideas that just start flowing as the developer muscles are contracting over the course of the week. The 3 weeks following every course allow me to test out and apply the ideas that were birthed during each successive course. I truly feel that I get just as much out of teaching the classes as I hope the students do from attending. My plan over the next 6 months is to branch out with regards to training and bring on board some kick butt collaborators who are experts in their own areas and continue to provide top notch, practical development training.

• Learning from the past. One of the things I always say is that if I can’t look back at code I have written a couple of months ago and not see ways that I could improve it, I have not done any real growing since. It’s not to say that the way the code was written was not good. It’s that I should not be content to just rinse and repeat my knowledge the exact same way from project to project. One of the strategies that has allowed me to keep my job fresh is to truly always try and think of new ways to solve what are sometimes that same problem. This keeps your mind on its toes and allows you to exercise the creative part of your development brain. Sure, it would be easy to take a “model” project and extract the code and place it in as the base for a new project; but where would the learning be.

• Passion. This is the last but by no means least point that I am going to make. When I was younger my dad told me “I don’t care if you want to be a garbage man, if you choose it as a profession and that is what you want to do, I want to you work as hard as you can and be the best garbage man that you can be.” Those words have resonated with me throughout my career life more than my dad knows. My company slogan is : Develop with Passion. Passion being, I feel, the main ingredient that allows me to continually pursue excellence in this field I have chosen for my career. I truly love the opportunity of being a software developer. Being able to craft solutions from the ground up and be a mentor and student of others around me is an amazing thing. Whenever I am on a mentorship engagement my first and foremost plan is to let the passion I have for my job shine through and potentially infect other developers!! The greatest blessing for me as a developer is when I am told that I have positively impacted somebody’s career path and have got them fired up for pursuing the future with intensity and joy.

You will notice that none of the above items are overly technical things. This is because, the technical side always takes care of itself when software is something that you love to do. How am I going to improve as a developer over the next 6 months? By continuing to pursue a path that I have been on for the last 7 years. A path that I feel blessed to have started down and one that ,for the meanwhile, is where I feel I am meant to be. Each day I am going to strive to sharpen the sword and not feel satisfied with prior accomplishments no matter how great they might have been. I am going to always remember that there will always be someone who knows more than me, makes more than me, etc. So I am not going to get hung up on becoming like someone else. I am going to live out my development life, wearing my passion on my sleeve and praying that each day I get the opportunity to impact someone both professionally and personally, and be thankful for the opportunity to work in a job that is both lucrative and challenging.

Just got an email from Manoj Khanna informing me that he just completed the creation of the Calgary Open Source Group. The goal for this group (as stated on the site) is simple:

“Calgary Open Source Group (COSG) is a forum that promotes the spread of Open Source Software and Free Software culture in Calgary. Through lively debate/talks, presentations and interactive network events, COSG aims to showcase the potential of open source software development and the impact it may have on software engineering for companies based in the oil city. “

It is too early to tell what impact that this group will have on the Calgary community. Currently I am member number 2!! I am hoping that number will grow over the course of the next couple of months. I am definitely excited about the prospect of increased awareness about the use and application of open source software for more projects being run in the Calgary area (and elsewhere).

This is a time where projects all over the world have realized the benefits at looking at the Alternatives that are being offered by the open source community. People are slowly starting to realize that there actually is less friction involved when looking at many open source offerings compared to their heavyweight counterparts. If nothing else, it is always good to be aware of other options and approaches to tackling the problems that you encounter in your project.

I hope that this group will help fuel some debate among the developers in Calgary who are both for and against Open Source development. As long as defenses do not go up, conversation is one of the quickest ways to expand your mind to possibilities you may not have even thought of!!

In the spirit of promoting more community involvement around dasBlog, Ben Scheirman is dasBlogThemeContest.aspx">hosting a contest to see who can come up with the coolest theme for dasBlog.

As well as the winner walking away with a $100, this contest can serve as a good introduction to the way that dasBlog implements its skinning architecture.

If you are feeling artistic, or you are in need of some cash to buy a new book, spend a couple of hours and get your theme submission into the contest.

Happy designing!!

Being that I have been experiencing a bit of discomfort when I type as of late. I thought I would take drastic measures to prevent RSI from becoming an issue. After reading Carl’s post about the DataHand I decided to spend some time online researching the product. After pouring through testimonials, user guides and PDF’s I decided to call the sales department.

I asked to speak to someone who actually used the datahand. It just so happened that the person I was talking to had been using the product since 1998. I grilled her about  the mechanics and how friendly it is towards programmers. She even took the time to describe to me how I could perform my refactorings in ReSharper. She also mentioned that she has not used a mouse since adopting the product.

Well that was it. A way to decrease the stress of typing on my arms and wrists while also achieving mouseless computing (physical mouse that is); I was sold.

My DataHand should ship by the 15th of June. At which point I am sure that I am going to be going through a massive un-learning/re-learning of how to type with this, what looks to be, phenomenal device.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki, for pointing me in the direction of the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church website. Even if you are not a believer, I think that everyone can learn something by watching the sermon Jesus & Your Job.

Often I can fall into the trap of getting caught up in the politics of the environment around me, I need to remember first and foremost why I am usually brought in, in the first place : To Develop and Mentor. I love how Nancy continually stresses the point that "work is the creation of value", all of us have the capacity to influence the attitudes of the people that we work with. Some of us have the blessing of being able to completely turn around the feelings of an entire environment. The trick is to ensure that we try to maintain a positive outlook on what can sometimes be a not great situation.

Again, watch the video, I am sure that everyone can take away some learning from it.

Bil Simser was the first to tag me in this game so here is a list of 5 things that lots of people don't know about me.

1. I was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England. I lived in England until I was 14 years old. At the age of 14 my parents moved us to Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada.
2. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for just over 10 years. My wife and I met on one of the first days of high school. We had grade 9 english together and got to know each other a little during this time. At the beginning of grade 10 we hung out for a little while (I was very shy), we went out on a "date" where I ended the evening by telling her how I would love to date someone just like her (not one of my smartest moves!!). We were best friends for most of grade 11, and started dating at the end of grade 11. 4 months after graduation we were married.
3. My wife and I have 4 beautiful children ranging from 9 years old to 1 year old. This is always something that baffles people as most people who meet us are always stumped at how large our family is. This is mostly due to the fact that we look much younger than we are!! My favourite lines in reference to our perceived age is:
1. "It's so nice that you are spending the day looking after you brothers and sister!!".
2. (Solicitor coming to the door) "Are your parents home?"
4. I wrote my first computer game at 8 years old on a BBC Microcomputer. This was the first computer that I ever received. It came with a book on BBC Basic. I proceeded to teach myself enough to write a Pong game. After that brief (fun) experience with programming it was not until the age of 18 that I would start programming on a computer again.
5. I'm 28 years old. Now you know!!

In the spirit of this blog tag I now tag:

• Mike Nichols
• Shary Mudassir
• Ben Scheirman
• Billy McCafferty
• Martin Fowler

It's a little late, but "Happy new year"!!

I am completely pumped about the potential for this new year. I am excited about the potential of meeting a torrent of new people while training/presenting/developing!!

I just got awarded a MVP so I am thrilled that my efforts in the community have been recognized. One of the great things about being an MVP is being in a position to nominate other MVP's. I have met with a lot of people over the last year who definitely (in my opinion) deserve to have their efforts recognized.

The month of January is already off to a good start. I will be presenting in Calgary on January 10th:

Enterprise Patterns
With Jean-Paul Boodhoo
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
At LUNCH TIME: 12:00pm–1:00pm
Registration start at:  11:30 am
Roxy-Theatre B
Sunlife Plaza Conference Centre
112 - 4th Avenue SW, Calgary

If you are in the Calgary area, feel free to stop by and ask questions/say hi.

I am also looking forward to January 27th as I will be presenting some sessions at the Victoria code camp. It should be a blast.

See you on the road!!

I have been pretty quiet the last month or two (and for good reason!!). I have a new gameplan in place for next year along with a couple of new developments that I will talk about in 2007.

I am going to take the rest of the year off from blogging, and will resume at a more frequent pace in the new year. Needless to say, over the last couple of months I have amassed a wealth of info that I would love to share with the community. The majority of this sharing will take place in the form of presentations, mentoring engagements, and training sessions, and articles.

My presentation schedule for the month of January 2007 looks as follows:

• January 9th - Recording DNRTV episode on Design Patterns (could turn into a series if there is enough interest).
• January 10th - Lunch and Learn session in Calgary (not sure of location yet) on Enterprise Patterns
• January 27th - Victoria Code Camp

If you live in Calgary or Victoria, I look forward to seeing you out at one of the presentations.

I pray that you have an amazing Christmas with your friends and family.

See you next year.