AngleBrackets 2014

• Hanselman is taller than me
  • That's not really saying much.
  • I can hardly count the ways I'm going to drop his name even though we only talked about how long it takes to get to Florida. Thanks for the street credit Scott!
• TypeScript got no love
  • Not a single session in TypeScript and it is confusing since I think it is a big game changer. Actually I'm surprised because other people think it's a game changer, pretty sure nobody is listening to me :)
  • A couple people did say they are planning some typescript sessions in the future.
• Gulp.js is going to solve lots of problems
  • http://www.johnpapa.net/gulp-and-grunt-at-anglebrackets/
  • It is program driven instead of config driven so  you can step through the code instead of guess what might be wrong.
  • It is essentially a counterpart / replacement for grunt.js .
• Angular is winning me over [Correction: Angular has won] ( John Papa, Dan Wahlin, Ward Bell )
  • The author of Durandal has been working on the AngularJS 2.0 core team for 3 months now. It would seem that the ecosystem for knockout just got much smaller.
  • I'm still very new to Angular but so far it looks like it could keep an otherwise out of control SPA somewhat organized. It had some very helpful error messages baked in as well, as I suffered my way through the beginning course.
  • I had so many conversations about it I started saying "Durangal". lol.
  • Knockout JS and Durandal are still totally awesome, but if using a technology that is going to be more common makes a difference then Angular gets the nod.
• NUI stands for Natural User Interface
  • Think Kinect and all the ways that computers can interact with body motion and various ways to digitize visual information.
  • You are being tracked! I didn't realize how interested the clients of this consultant / presenter were in identifying demographic information visually. It makes sense when you think about it but we are on the verge of mass tracking.
  • Digital Native is a term. And it seems to mean 'young' people who grew up with the latest user interfaces that are quickly becoming beyond the reach of us older people.
• Async Javascript Testing (Bell_ASPIntersection_AB06_AsyncJSTesting.pdf, alt)
  • I like how Ward Bell thinks. It's almost like when he codes, he is building a defensive fortress.
  • Don't confuse 'Unit Test' with 'Integration Test'.
  • If your test is too complicated it will get commented out and you might as well not have written it. Keep it clean and useful so the next dev has a fighting chance of maintaining it.
  • Ward Bell dresses really cool or scary depending on how early in the morning it is. From crocodile dundee to left over disco man. I can really appreciate a fellow entertainer who understands it is all a show!
• Estimating Project Time ( Michael Krasowski pdsa.com )
  • This is the session I quoted within the first 20 minutes of arriving to work the next day.
  • Start an estimation model that includes all the information you need and use it on every project. This helps you get a history of your estimates so you can improve the formula.
  • If you don't track your time [insert negative comment here and then start tracking your time already].
  • 5/50 rule. Stop and re-evaluate your estimate at 5% into the project and then again at 50%.
  • When taking an estimate from a developer, get the hours and the confidence level in percent then add any lack of confidence to the hours. As an example, a dev says they are 50% confident it will take 8 hours. 50% of 8 hours is 4 hours, so add that to the 8 to get a 12 hour estimate. Another example: The dev says it will take 10 hours and is 90% confident. 10% of 10 hours is 1 hour added to 10 hours makes an 11 hour estimate.
• The art of disciplined creativity (Denise R. Jacobs)
  • Avoid 'communication addiction'.
    • this means checking your phone/ email/ texts constantly
    • evidently your brain "squirts out dopamine" and makes you feel good when you receive this communication.
  • Multi-tasking kills creativity.
    • the example used was the zeigarnik effect. The premise is that if you are supposed to remember little things, like follow up communication or todo items, it stops your brain from truly working on a problem. This seems true to me.
  • The evil voices in your head.
    • fear of failure or being an imposter at what you do kills creativity
  • Show up every day.
    • creativity can be trained to 'show up' on a regular basis but must be put on a schedule
  • The Pomodoro technique was talked about
  • Have a conversation with your ideas, mentally talk to them, tell them to show up when expected.
  • "Plus it" is a technique for meetings where there are no bad ideas, just add or expand instead of saying "no" or critiquing the suggestion.
• Glimpse is like mini-profiler, chrome tools, fiddler, and a .net profiler all in one
  • Just go look at it right now. Why are you still reading this?
  • They gave me a sticker and it is now on my super cool laptop!

How cool is it to work for a company that invests in their developers?

Some Pics....