Wekeroad — Tekpub's ASP.NET MVC 3

Tekpub’s ASP.NET MVC 3 - Suggested Outline

May 16, 2011

In the spirit of being as transparent as possible - I thought I’d follow up on our plans for the forthcoming Mastering ASP.NET MVC 3 series. Many people have asked what we’ll be doing - so here’s what I’ve put together.

Keeping It Real

Overwhelmingly people have asked for a “real-world, advanced look at MVC 3”. They’re tired of the scaffold demos and Hello World things you see online. They’re impressive demos, to be sure, but don’t directly suggest to developers “this is how you can make your life better by using MVC 3”.

So that will be my focus: building a real-world app from scratch. Now you might be asking yourself “who’s world are we talking about here” and the answer would be “the one world I know well: MINE”.

I’m going to pivot this on the one real thing I know - building a startup using ASP.NET MVC that focuses on sharing videos.

A Startup? Really?

I know that not everyone is going to care about “the startup thing” - and if you’re one of those who think so - I’d ask you to reconsider. Every new effort is a startup - even if you’re rebuilding an old application.

You face the same time constraints, the same budget requirements, and the same long-run concerns. Whether you’re in a large corporation or it’s you and a buddy in the basement - you need to show profitability and forward movement.

Well, for the most part I guess. I know many of you will gladly tell me about the glacial movement of the company you work for. If that’s you, look at it this way: this series will prime you for leaving and starting your own thing.

The Outline

Every application changes shape over time. Early stages tend to be guerilla, later stages tend to get a bit more crisp. Through it all you make decisions - such as:

Do I go full-tilt with IoC right now?
Do I care about C#4 and language enhancements?
Should we use a Repository, CQRS, or can we just slam some code in the Controller?
ASP.NET Membership - it’s fast and Right Now, but will it limit me later?
Testing - what makes sense in the Real World? I have work to do, yes, but I also can’t afford to make an ass out of myself publicly when the app is bug-ridden. What’s the right mix?
Is scaffolding a demo trick? Does it really work?
What is a RESTful approach and why do I care?
I see sites that use jQuery/Javascript “for greatest power” - like AgileZen - how does MVC help me do that kind of thing better?
WTF with deployment? I need to do this quite often - how can I effectively deploy an MVC application?
SaaS? When should I use other services to augment my own? Can it hurt? I’ll show how our move to Shopify has saved me time/money, and how our choice to use JanRain for OpenID almost killed us.
Customer Service. Gotta have it - we cycled through 3 services before ending up with a great one.
Subscriptions! If you need to charge - let’s take a look at some choices.

Depending on where you are at in the lifecycle of your application - the answer to these questions change. Forces will change the shape of your application - and your technical approach.

Time to Market and the ability to change on a dime are critical in the first 6 months. Your application/architecture needs to be able to react to that.

After the first year, either you have an idea that takes hold or you don’t. If you’re lucky and you do - then you’ll have some customers and you’ll need to shift your focus to reliability, predicability, and availability. This typically means subtle shifts to the shape of your application.

After 3 years it’s safe to say you’ve got a solid application and user base. Now it’s time to make sure you don’t screw things up as you add on features over time. Your process needs a bit more rigor - especially since the underlying technology has probably shifted, once again…

When?

I’m writing the outline right now and I’m hoping to start the demos and code this week. I’m hoping for a June release but I want to be sure I get this right so it might push to July.

There will be opinion in this screencast - but I’m hoping that the amount of supporting arguments given will at least arm you with the criteria from which I made the decision. You might think differently about certain things - and that’s great! The point is: I won’t hide how I make certain decisions.

The focus is you - and how YOU can build a whip-crack application that’s applicable to your idea or business.

Hope you join us!