I’m getting quite used to C# 3.0 and .Net 3.5 features. So it took some getting used to not being able to use ‘var’ and linq-to-objects when writing the ‘My book-pick’ widget for BlogEngine.Net you see on the right. Eventually I just gave up and hacked the Web.Config. It turned out to be really easy to switch BlogEngine.Net to C# 3.0.

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Software development can sometimes be very counterintuitive. For example, when people started building larger software systems halfway through the last century one of the things they discovered was that changing existing software is often far more difficult and error prone than building new software. Most developers rediscover this somewhere in their first year of being a professional developer. They start out with a new project and as time goes by changes start taking more and more time, this can be very hard to explain to a client and usually we don’t until we get completely stuck and tell the client we need to start from scratch. I think this practice has been responsible for most of the bad reputation software development has.

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In the good old days of dial up connections and Usenet I used to enjoy a good flame war now and then. I’m not really a flame war kind of guy. I get distracted far too  easy to really commit myself to consistently flaming my enemies. And I’m bad at remembering names so in an online-world where you don’t see faces I usually forget who I’m supposed to flame anyway. But other people’s flame wars can be really entertaining.

But it seems people are slowly adapting to the way they interact online. Modern media are great for flaming but somehow I see less and less of that. You still see occasional blogosphere drama and occasionally fanboy X bashes platform Y. But that’s about it. Most people have found out that the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. And so people seem to find middle ground far easier. Like they should … in most cases.

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The first thing I actually missed from Webforms are nested masterpages. Fortunately they’re not missing at all, they just figured out those MVC guys (and galls) like code so much, they don’t need no stinkin’ templates for something as trivial as this. And of course we don’t. Here’s how to roll your own.

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I’ve been very happy on the windows programming side. I used to do web-programming but frankly ASP.Net webforms spoiled that for me. Agreed… it’s very good for quickly setting up administrative websites that run inside the firewall. It has all the right abstractions for that allowing you to quickly piece together CRUD stuff without worrying about state, postbacks, javascript or even HTML. But when you want to build fun websites that look good and are designed to run on the big bad web these abstractions start to work against you.

Lately I’ve been getting a bit restless though. I needed to learn some new stuff. Frankly my job is boring, they’ve got me maintaining and supporting some C++ MFC application *yawn* so time to get back into web programming. Enter MVC!

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Last weekend I helped organize the Dutch Open Space Code Day. This wasn’t the first open space event I’ve been to but it was the first one where I was involved in the organization. Kees Dijk and me got the idea from the UK Open Space Code days that are organized by Alan Dean. And with some help from Imtech ICT, who kindly provided space, coffee and lunch, we got going.

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