Date: 2012-09-06 19:35:43 Created: 2012-09-06 15:30:47
Rain and wind are hitting the windows. The air is cooling, the skies are darkening. It has been a good if tired day and the end of another good week is rolling in.
A week of bug hunting, barefoot-ish running and desks locked in standing position.
The week started in seriously geeky fashion, with an evening of pizza, cola and yet another rediscovery of the joys of Javascript. I attended the first meeting of the kind-of-a-mouthful-named Sweden Pluralsight study group and began learning about MVVM and the Knockout Javascript framework. Gothenburg is becoming quite full of Meetup-organized groups of interest to developers, and I generally try to attend all which feel even vaugely of interest. You should too if similar things are going on near you, the widened views and new mixes of people can do wonders to your thoughts.
In any case, the rough order of the evening was food, video-based course material in nice bite-sized chunks and plenty of time to discuss and code. Oh, and a surprise opening by Aaron Skonnard, the CEO of Pluralsight who is seriously into encouraging the community around the company and material. In any case, we were off to a good start.
Several people have commented that they would have liked more structure in the form of clearer assignments and how to go about the tasks. To my always rather unstructured and slightly Monday-tired mind, however, the free form felt just perfect. Perhaps I would have gained different things from being more strictly placed in a group, but as it was I immediately got sucked into playing with code during practical sections, and the amount of time given felt just right as well. The material introduced Jsfiddle and talked a bit about how to develop web-based things in Visual Studio, but nothing assumed or required you to use either. For my part I switched between Jsfiddle and the classic web-browser-plus-text-editor and found that to work just as well.
I have done quite a bit of web development professionally, but most of it was a few years back now. That means it is always a great kick to dip my toes in situations like this, finding the familiar structures in place along with new exciting frameworks to mess with.
To wrap up, this was just the beginning of the beginning, and a really good one. I will definitely be back for more, computer in hand and hungry for more knowledge. Huge thanks to Iris Classon for organizing, cooking (well …) and generally setting and keeping things in motion!
Side note: I have read up a bit, and I am still not clear at all on why we need the MVVM label to put on what very much seems to be the MVC pattern. Is it a case of not feeling comfortable enough with the term to feel you can make it your own? Each to their own.