Software Engineering 101, Southern Style

Microsoft often holds events on how to use our latest tools and technologies. I love going to those events, and helping people get the most out of our tools and frameworks.

One thing that I am passionate about is how we can all be better developers. Jim Holmes put on an event in Columbus a few months ago called Software Engineering 101 that covers how to be a better developer. The morning is comprised of presentations on SOLID, etc. The afternoon is just one big pair programming session to work and learn hands on how to use the principles discussed in the morning. The afternoon will provide guidance and challenges to give you something to work towards.

The Columbus event was sold out and packed very quickly. It was such a huge success I begged Jim to bring is to Nashville. We will be holding the event in the Nashville office. The event will also be webcasted so people will be able to participate online. We will even be able to help people who are pairing at home.

While we will be using mostly .NET and Visual Studio, these practices work for any language or platform. Please spread the word. And bring your computer!

Event details:

Saturday, February 27, 2010
8:00am - 5:00pm
Microsoft Office
2555 Meridian Blvd., Ste. 300
Franklin, TN 37067

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Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online experience.

8:00 am – Introductions

8:15 am - Principles of Object Oriented Programming 

9:30 am - SOLID Software Development

11:00 am - Understanding Code Metrics

11:20 am – Hands On Demo

12:30 pm - Lunch (not provided)

1:30 pm - Hands on Test Driven Development 5:00 pm – Closing

Software Engineering 101

This is a one-day, FREE event focused on core skills that modern developers need to have to be successful today. This isn’t about learning the basics of Silverlight, WPF, or <insert_new_tech_of_day>, rather, this conference will help you understand how to build software that is better designed, more maintainable, and more testable.

We’ll spend the morning on fundamentals around object-oriented programming, the SOLID principles and a few other important skills. .NET is completely object-oriented, but many developers don’t fully grasp the underlying principles to get the most of it. We will then build on this with a tour of the SOLID principles. SOLID is an acronym for the five principles that developers should follow regardless of project type or platform. This session will rely on the object-oriented knowledge, and will teach the developers how to better write their code. The next section will focus on metrics in code (and will use our tools for the samples) to show that you need to understand and instrument your codebase as you extend it. The last session will build on all of this to show modern test driven development (showing MStest and other frameworks). Using all of these skills, and our tools/platform, developers will build better software with a higher level of quality, and better customer satisfaction.

The afternoon will focus on hands-on practice with the skills, since it isn’t enough to just watch someone talk about them. A programmers problem (think like an assignment in a CS class in college) will be given. Developers will need to bring their own laptops with Visual Studio, to work through the afternoon. People will pair up on their laptops to write the tests and code they need to solve the problems. Those that are attending the session from home will participate in the same way, writing the code on their laptop to solve the problems.

We will have ‘presenters’ in the live meeting that can answer Q&A, and even check on their code by using the live meeting. We will pick one speaker and one person that is new to these skills to pair together, and color comment on what they are doing over live meeting. So people attending from home can do the work on their own VS, and watch a new person learn and do at the side of the speaker over live meeting.

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