Rob Conery's Blog

Real World Examples

I just pushed the first video in our new series at Tekpub - Real World ASP.NET MVC 3. I’m putting my heart and soul into this one - it means a lot to me. It’s carved right from my direct experience working in various startups over the last 12 years (minus my time at MS). It’s another of our advanced titles - and I’m also letting a bit more of my opinion into it.

We Need More Of This

A long while back I had a chance to talk with Geoffrey Grosenbach (the PeepCode guy) while he was here on vacation. We had a few beers on the beach and talked about various ideas we’ve had - namely how to bring attention to the value of screencasts as learning tools.

One thing that we thought about at the time was an “un-plugged” version of things. People had asked me constantly (after the NHibernate series) if I could shutup and let Oren go all-out, building something interesting.

I love that idea - and Geoffrey was thinking the exact same thing: we need more “mentoring” - style videos of developers that might not speak a lot at conferences, but from whom you can learn a truckload just by watching.

PeepCode has debuted their Play by Play series which I think is extraordinary - I’ve watched each one. Guys like Gary Bernhardt and Zed Shaw going full speed, solving a problem.

We’re doing the same thing at Tekpub, starting tomorrow - I’ll release our first title, “Full Throttle with Rob Sullivan” a DBA and developer who rips apart an MVC 3 application (using EF Code First) named “StackOver-Faux” - which as you might have guessed sits on top of a massive mountain of StackOverflow data and is timing out all over the place. Rob uses his DBA magic and fixes it up properly - showing us tricks along the way.

There Is No Right Way

What’s valuable about a Real World screencast is that you get the full flavor of the person behind it - their opinions, foibles, and insights. Yes they will be wrong about some things - but they’ll be right about others.

The point is they will likely make you think - challenging your opinions or reenforcing your own set of biases. I think we learn best this way - people aren’t sheep and tend to think critically - they can only do that if challenged properly!

There is no One True Way to do anything - the only thing you can do is to understand what can kill you and what can heal you - the rest is gravy.

There Will Be More

Over the last few years that Tekpub has been running, we’ve covered a ton of conceptual stuff and did a few Real World things along the way. I’d like to shift our focus a bit and seek out the people that “do” - and make them talk to us!

Cheers and I hope you enjoy the new stuff coming! Also - go have a look at PeepCode’s stuff. It’s well worth the money. As is CodeSchool - they put me to complete shame with their polish.

I think there’s a tide-change coming about on how we learn. I find that I can grasp new concepts a whole lot faster than killing a bunch of trees to put it on paper - hopefully you will too.