Last night, Refresh the Triangle hosted an energizing "call to arms" talk by Stuart Halloway of Relevance on legacy code. He started off by defining legacy as the degree to which code fails to communicate intent and how much "ceremony" it has. As he elaborated on this, he explained that his goal is to have code that has as much essence (code that communicates intent) and as little ceremony (code that hides intent) as possible. He went on to discuss methods to reach this goal, including continuous integration, unit testing, full code coverage, and "relentless review and audit." For the kicker, he talked about a three-layer system that encourages as little legacy as possible: a base or stable layer of Java (or some type of virtual machine), a dynamic language layer, like Ruby, and lastly, a domain layer utilizing a DSL that just captures intent. He's posted his slides if you want to dive a little deeper.
It was exciting to see that a number of these techniques are already being implemented here at Viget. It'd be great to hear from other people about their attempts to end legacy.
We had a great turnout, with a number of new faces, and there was a lot of good post-presentation discussion, thanks in no small part to our wonderful host, the West End Wine Bar. Thanks again to Stuart, and all the people that made it out. We've posted some pictures on Flickr, taken by our resident photographer, David.
This past Thursday night saw the sixth meeting of Refresh the Triangle, the local chapter of the Refresh tech network that Viget’s helping to organize. Nathan Huening from OnWired gave a great talk called “Dr. jQuery (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DOM),” and his passion for the material was evident. In a series of increasingly complex examples, Nathan showed off the power and simplicity of the jQuery JavaScript library. He demonstrated that most of jQuery can be reduced to “grab things, do stuff,” starting with simple CSS modifications and moving to AJAX, animation, and custom functionality.
To get a good taste of the presentation, you can use FireBug to run Nathan’s sample code against the demo page he set up. You’ll want to be running FireFox 2, as FF3 Beta 5 gave me a lot of grief while I tried to follow Nathan’s examples.
Big thanks to Nathan and to Duke’s Blackwell Interactive for hosting the event, as well as to everyone who came out; maybe we’ve got you pictured on our Flickr page.
Hope to see you next month.
Brian on Wednesday will contribute to a discussion at RefreshDC on the challenges and strategies associated with starting a business. This month’s “The World of Startups"-themed meeting will be held at Strategic Analysis, Inc. (3601 Wilson Blvd, Suite 600, in Arlington) beginning at 7 pm.
Other speakers include Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, and Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine, among others.
Learn more or sign up to attend (free) on the the registration page.
Ben will briefly tear himself away from his new parenting duties tomorrow when he presents “Domain Modeling with REST” at 7 p.m. to more than 20 confirmed attendees at the Raleigh-area Ruby Brigade (raleigh.rb).
For some time now, REST has been the One True Way to build Rails applications. Unfortunately, though, RESTful design is often easier to aim for than it is to achieve. Complex domain modeling with resources can be a challenge, and the implementation of REST in Rails itself can cause unexpected problems. In this talk, I’ll be discussing these issues and more. By the time we’re done, you’ll be ready to build the RESTful systems you’ve always dreamed of—or, at least, make your applications simpler to build, maintain, and integrate with the rest of the web.
On June 13th, little old Falls Church will host a nice big one-day conference right down the street from Viget at the always-engaging State Theater.
BlogPotomac is this year’s premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC. Attendees can expect a one-day event with nationally renowned speakers and advanced discussion of best social media marketing practices.
Speakers include Lionel Menchaca of Direct2Dell, Frank Gruber of AOL and Somewhat Frank, and Dan Beyers of The Washington Post’s WashBiz blog, among a growing list of others. Tickets are $75—just register through eventbrite, or follow updates on Twitter.
We’re glad we have the chance to coordinate and sponsor the event, and we’ll have a few folks from our Marketing Lab in attendance. Kudos to co-chairs Geoff and Debbie for all their hard work pulling it together.
When Frank organized the first TECH cocktail DC last year, I mentioned to him that we’d do whatever we could to support the next one. So, when he asked us to sponsor so that all our friends in the local tech community wouldn’t have to fork over their own hard-earned cash for drinks, we happily jumped onboard.
Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Venue: MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Cost: $0 - It’s free!
RSVP: techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com
I expect this event will reach capacity before too long, so if you’ll be in town, please sign up, stop by, and say hello.
We’re hosting the DC Social Media Club event again this month. From 6:30 to 8 pm next Thursday, April 10th, Ann Bernard of WhyGoSolo will share her experiences building her startup and how she’s positioned her platform from a social media perspective.
I’m always interested to hear directly from an entrepreneur how they’ve built their business, so I’m expecting a good presentation. Anyone is welcome to attend for free—just to RSVP.
If you’re wondering where all the DC-area web start-up and technology folks are going to be tonight, it seems like TeqCorner in McLean will be busy. Social Matchbox DC is:
A fusion of resume clinic, startup job fair and networking event.
Several of our clients will be there, including Loladex, ODEO, and Razoo. A bunch of us from Viget will be there supporting the event and getting to know people who are interested in getting to know Viget. It’s free to attend and should be a great way to check out some of the most interesting companies in the area.
Our very own Clinton R. Nixon‘s proposal for a tutorial entitled, “Extending Rails: Understanding and Building Plugins,” was accepted this week to O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention 2008! OSCON—which will be held in Portland, OR, July 21-25—welcomes more than 2,500 people each year and selects only 40 tutorials. Clinton is “more than a little excited” to lead his three-hour tutorial at the premier gathering of open-source developers in the world.
Congrats, Clinton!
A team of Viget folks spent a long weekend in Texas for South By Southwest. We saw some interesting panels, reunited with folks we hadn't seen in months or since last year, and got to meet and talk to dozens of folks we hadn't ever seen. It was definitely a great time, but it was also lacking a lot that we look for in a great event, especially one being paid for by our professional development budgets.
Continue reading "Building a Better SXSW"
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