Some Lessons from Day 1 of Nothin But .Net

Posted September 1, 2009 * Comments(4)

I’m working on 2 hours of sleep last night thanks to my 17 month old, so I thought I would record some of my thoughts about my first day of training yesterday before they are completely lost in the haze of sleep deprivation and the blur of day two.

  1. Delegates are like onions: there are many layers to peel back and prolonged exposure sometimes makes you want to cry.
  2. Slamming a Mountain Dew at 9:00 PM to help to make it through the last few hours of class seems like a really good idea…until you get home and try to go to sleep.
  3. JP codes hella fast. I really need to make a commitment to go mouseless and dig even deeper into R#.
  4. Internal DSL’s are fun to consume, but creating them is like drinking day old Folgers coffee through your nose.
  5. The branching and merging story in Git is way better than it is SVN, but you’re forked if you rely on everyone in the class being able to pull from GitHub through a hotel network.
  6. Goals are powerful. I think I’ve been aiming way too low lately.
  7. Unlearning is sometimes more difficult than learning.
  8. Training should be as much about getting inspired and having your baseline expectations blown away than about learning specific content.
  9. I wish I had taken JP’s course sooner and will recommend it to everyone I know.

Time to go refill my caffeine IV before class starts.

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4 Comments so far

  1. Jeremy Liberman on September 1st, 2009

    I think a delegate is like carving a pumpkin: you know your input’s going to be a large orange cucurbit (That’s science geek for pumpkin,) and your ouput is going to be a carving. The result can be pretty messy, kind of cool, sometimes scary, and there is risk of hurting your fingers.

  2. Troy Tuttle on September 1st, 2009

    Internal DSL’s: I second that. My rule of thumb to this point is: If you are going to work behind the DSL as much as you are in front, then they don’t add much value. I think DSL’s have gained too much hype. They’re nice, but not the next silver bullet.

  3. Robz on September 4th, 2009

    I’d totally go every year if I could. The best course out there!

  4. Michel Grootjans on September 24th, 2009

    I followed a NBDN bootcamp about a year ago. I must say it has been a life-changing experience for me.

    I would recommend it as the only course you need for a career boost (I’m not talking about money here!) if you are (or want to be) passionate about what you do.

    You can read my daily reports on my blog: http://geekswithblogs.net/alte.....25439.aspx

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