Yesterday I attended DDD5. This was my third DDD and was definitely the best. The agenda had some ideal sessions, both thought provoking and informative and I could easily have picked two sessions per slot so had to make some difficult choices.
I’ve submitted by feedback, which I hope all attendees do, but here is a quick overview of the day:
An introduction to Unit Testing with Mock Objects was good, Colin used Rhino Mocks for the demo and NUnit (why aren’t you using MbUnit Colin?) and it was a good introduction. Pleased he didn’t spend too much time talking about TDD, instead focusing on what the talk was actually about. Need to look at Mocks some more, expect one or two posts on the subject over the next month.
Being lazy is an art form (or: Making your computer work for you) was very cool. It was Zi’s first session and he came across well. The content was also very good, firstly he discussed CodeRush and Refactor! then moved on to discuss DXCore and creating addins for Visual Studio. I have DXCore installed, but never used it to develop so was really interesting to see how easy and powerful it was to use.
An Appraisal of “Object Thinking” was another really good session. I haven’t read the Object Thinking book, but the talk was still really good and made some good points. I need to go buy the book now, read it, then re-read his slides.
Do Design Patterns Make Sense in ASP.NET? discusses all the patterns which are used within ASP.net and broken it down in a very understandable way. However, he didn’t answer the question of if they make sense…
Next Generation Data Access with LINQ discussed how to use Linq for data access, with a bit of TDD and DDD thrown in. Interesting, but covered most of the stuff I have already read – that reminds me I need to finish reading the Linq in Action book.
Grok Talks where held at lunch, they where much better than previous years with help from a Mic and big screen. The Imagine Cup winners did their presentation, which was ‘interesting’. I only managed to catch the second half but it was interesting to see how they came across and what they where talking about.
Geek Dinner – After the event I attended the Geek dinner which was held at a different location this year, on the side of the River. Really nice location, shame about the weather, but it was good, very easy to talk to people but also move around and talk to other people which is not possible at Pizza Express. Plus the beer was following so it was all good. The food was nice, there wasn’t a lot but the beer, atmosphere and venue made up for this. While it wasn’t in the town centre it was still easy to get to so staying at the Novotel wasn’t a problem, where I had one or two more beers before heading to bed. I also find the dinner to be a great way to end the day, makes the day more of a event and more fun.
So onto DDD6 (in about 6 months time) which hopefully I will be attending, I might finally submit a session after talking about doing it for so long. If you haven’t been to DDD before, or you have but not gone to the dinner afterwards I really recommend both. Great day, great night, great fun!
