Alt.NET, stop talking just do it!

Hopefully the last of my Alt.NET soapbox posts for the day. There was a post by Colin Ramsay that while was quite negative about the whole Alt.NET thing (it was called Abandon Alt.NET) but it contained a single nugget that I thought was just right for the moment:

If they really wanted to change things then they should be writing about their techniques in detail, coming up with introductory guides to DDD, TDD, mocking, creating screencasts, or giving talks at mainstream conferences, or producing tools to make the level of entry to these technologies lower than it is.

I argue we've been doing this. Just visit the blogs at CodeBetter, Weblogs, and ThoughtWorks (these are just three aggregates that collect up a bunch of musings from Alt.NET people, there are others as well as one-offs). There's noise to the signal, so you have to sift through it but the good stuff is there if you look hard enough.

I totally agree with Justice (and others) in what he said on the mailing list:

Looking at this from a perspective of the conference participants being the developers and the general .NET community being the "client" in this case, how much value is the "client" going to derive from either:
a) what our mission statement is
b) what we choose to name this group?
in comparison to actual involvement with devs, recaps of sessions, evangelism efforts?

So just do it. Enough with the name bashing, mission identity, who is and who isn't, and all that fluff. No fluff. Just code. Just go out and write. Blog. Present. Mentor. Learn. And if you're already doing that, you're ahead of the game.

3 Comments

  • While I agree that the community is (and has been for a long time) been publishing content on the principles and techniques that currently characterize the ALT.NETer, there are 2 problems in the approach IMHO.

    1) There is a signal to noise ratio problem, as you mentioned

    2) The venues in which most of the content is published are those venues attended primarily by those who are either already of the same mindset or are looking to be convinced (and of course, there’s always the random person who just likes to argue).

    This was a conversation from one of the sessions on spreading the ALT.NET values outside of the ALT.NET community, and while there seemed to be general acknowledgement, it remains to be seen whether the community will take a chance and publish in less familiar (and possibly less friendly) venues.

  • Here's a weird example why you do need a mission statement:
    what if I use waterfall throughout my development process? I'm then not compliant to MS' way of development, so I could be considered 'alt.net'.

    Am I in that situation? Or am I not ?

    The main point about having a mission statement is that you can use that to sell the idea of the movement to people who have never heard of it. If you (== the people who consider themselves alt.net's core) are continuing with the fluffy state of affairs as they are now, in the end everyone will think they're alt.net like a lot of people think (and say!) they're true agile, while they're absolutely not doing anything which increases the ability to be adaptive to change.

    There may be a lot of info out there about software engineering and what not, however if it stays fragmented, and if it was already there, the whole idea of a movement doesn't add anything to the table: people still have to go to google to look things up. This is an active approach, a pull approach.

    But the people you WANT TO reach with your message are passive. The vast majority doesn't visit user groups, doesn't read blogs. If you don't act to reach those people, your message will only be heard in the small group who has already heard the message.

  • Bil, Rockarts was saying that he thinks you have had the best insight of many of the bloggers covering the conf and I totally agree! I really do believe strongly that a mission statement, if one comes, will grow organically out of what starts here rather than being something that needs to be defined up front.

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