In about 2 weeks, our Belgian ALT.NET group will give a somewhat large presentation on what ALT.NET is and some of the important concepts and practices. As a part of that presentation, i’ll give a 10 minute ‘lightning-talk’ about TDD. I’ve already got a bit of an idea as to what i’m going to say, but i figured i should ask my readers for some input.

So, if you had to give a short talk (remember, only 10 minutes) about TDD, targeted to an audience that has little to no experience with it, or may not even know anything about it, what are the things you’d really want to highlight? And what are the things that probably aren’t worth mentioning for such a short talk?

Or for those of you who have little to no experience with, or knowledge about TDD, what are the things you’d like to hear if someone were to introduce the concept to you in about 10 minutes?

Since its inception, the ALT.NET community has grown a lot. A lot of people have joined the mailinglists and all over the world local ALT.NET communities have been created, with most likely a lot more on the way. That is definitely a good thing. At the same time though, the ALT.NET community has probably put off as many people (if not more) than it has attracted in the first place.

Now, just so everyone is clear on this: i consider myself a part of that community and i definitely want to see it become successful. But for that to happen, i think we need to make some changes. The biggest problem is that we are often perceived as being elitist, and according to some people closed-minded. And honestly, there’s a lot of truth to that. Just read our mailinglists, our blog posts, our ‘tweets’ (i don’t use twitter so i don’t know if that’s the correct way of referring to it but you know what i mean) and a lot of the material we put out there in general. Not everyone in this community is guilty of it, but a lot of us (myself included) are.

In general, we are extremely opinionated and we often state our opinions with a “our way or the highway” kind of mentality. We often outright dismiss approaches or solutions that do not follow our principles and values. And we usually do it in a manner which comes across in a very negative way. And it’s really not hard to see why that puts a lot of people off. When someone simply tells me i need to do something in a certain way, my natural reflex is to question it. Why should i do it that way? If i don’t get a sound response to that (and one-liners usually don’t cut it), the person (or company or whatever) who made the claim immediately loses credibility in my book. I can definitely see how some people have felt that way after hearing/reading certain ALT.NET people making their claims without properly backing them up or simply brushing off any questioning of those claims.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being opinionated and voicing those opinions. But we really should try to do so in a more positive manner. Simply stating that all developers should use certain practices or principles just doesn’t work. We have to formulate our messages better and we probably need to provide more material that properly explains why practice X or principle Y or library Z allows us to achieve better results. And most importantly, we need to make sure we’re able to discuss these things with anyone who’s not yet ‘into it’ or even against it, without putting people off. If a lot of people think that we’re elitist, closed-minded, frustrated, annoying, or whatever (and they do, just google it) then we are clearly not doing a good job. If we really want to spread these practices and principles that we value so much, we can’t afford to rub so many people the wrong way.

As i mentioned in the beginning of my post, i’ve definitely made these mistakes on quite a few occasions. And i’m gonna try to change that from now on. So if you see me repeat those mistakes, please direct me to this post

A lot of people think ALT.NET is about using NHibernate, Castle Windsor, StructureMap, Resharper, Rhino Mocks, MonoRail, or whatever tool or library you can think of. It’s really not about that.

From altdotnet.org:

We are a self-organizing, ad-hoc community of developers bound by a desire to improve ourselves, challenge assumptions, and help each other pursue excellence in the practice of software development.

And that is really the essence of what ALT.NET is about. It is about continuous improvement, and sharing knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less. Whatever concept or tool that allows us to improve either ourselves or the way we work, should be used. No matter where the concept came from, or who created the tool.

We are often thought of as being anti-Microsoft. And although some of us probably are, that’s not what it’s about. We want quality. We want to work with as little friction as possible. I am pretty sceptical (to say the least) whenever Microsoft promises us the latest and greatest in whatever new product they’re working on, because i’ve felt the pain of their latest and greatest far too often to blindly believe whatever claims they make. But if they release something that allows me to do what i want to do without restricting my development habits (and i think ASP.NET MVC is looking pretty good on that front) then i will use it. Gladly even. Because i really don’t care where a tool or a library comes from, as long as it’s good. I definitely have my preferred set of libraries/tools but i’ll drop them in a heartbeat when something better comes along.

So when is a developer ‘ALT.NET’? According to altnetpedia.com, you are ALT.NET if you are:

• The type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
• You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
• You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
• You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles

Now tell me: How on earth did it ever get this far in our industry for this mindset to be considered alternative?

This evening, we finally had our first meeting. After wasting about an hour being stuck in traffic on the way there, i walked in there thinking “this better be good”. And it was. There were only 7 of us, but we expected that for this first meeting, where the goal was pretty much to toss some ideas around about what we as a group would be able to accomplish. Yves will post a summary of the meeting to the mailing list soon, so there’s no need to go over that here. But it is pretty nice to know that there are indeed a few motivated people who are willing to turn this into something worthwhile. It was pretty clear that we’re very interested in sharing knowledge and learning from each other so i think this will definitely lead to a lot of interesting stuff in the next couple of months.

So, if you speak Dutch and you’re truly interested in learning how to be a better developer, all you have to do is sign up and keep your eyes and ears open. Oh and you’re more than welcome to participate as well obviously

As you probably know, i’m somewhat fond of the ALT.NET movement. It seems like there are various local ALT.NET groups popping up in the US and in other countries as well. But we don’t have any in Belgium or the Netherlands, at least not any that i’m aware of.

Why don’t we just create a Dutch ALT.NET group? I’m willing to spend time, effort and money on this. Basically, what i want is sessions or even small conferences in Belgium or the Netherlands with typical ALT.NET content. That doesn’t mean it will be restricted to be about Nhibernate, or Castle, or any specific project or company. It has to be about concepts, techniques and approaches that will enable us to improve as software developers/designers/architects/… Of course, talking about specific products or projects can’t be avoided, but the concepts behind it should be the most important.

I know there are at least a half dozen people (and it’s really gotta be more than that) in Belgium that would be interested in something like this, so we really should try to get something going. Even if it just starts as discussing good software development in a bar over some beers, or organizing sessions, it doesn’t really mattter… as long as we’re learning and improving. And who knows where it can go from there.

Anyways… if anyone is interested in this, please get in touch with me (ralinx at davybrion.com) or comment on this post.

Update: apparently, there is some interest in this so i’ve set up the following google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/dutchaltdotnet