First off, what’s a Code Camp? Well, it’s merely an extended user group meeting of sorts (in my opinion) that is all day with great presenters presenting on a variety of topics including great food & door prizes. That in sum is a “Code Camp”. The difference is, they are not just presentations but the presenters will also code and show you examples live as they explain a topic (can’t get any better than that!). And a lot of times these presenters are coming from all over the U.S. in many cases to your local camp.
Why should you attend one? To learn code? Sure, but more importantly it’s much more than just code. Today I attended a Code Camp for the first time (specifically this one was in Chicago hosted by LCNUG).
Here are some reasons why YOU should get off your ass :) and take time to attend one:
1) To network with people and have a good time
2) Really motivates you to get into code in those times you’re sort of burned out. Gets you excited about code again
3) Allows you to get a refresh on latest good practices & code patterns that are being used
4) From talking with people or listening to presentations, you’re able to formulate a nice list of key “terms” that you can bring back with you and look up and research / practice to better yourself as a developer
5) Free food & prizes! (great books, software, etc.)
- Today I won a copy of Vista Ultimate (yea yea, Vista sucks, but I like it so screw all of ya :P. XP is old hat in my book and windows 7 will allow us to get rid of that XP addiction). Hey, it’s a free OS so I can’t complain.
And please don’t think you’re the only one who doesn’t know certain terminology, code techniques, or the latest code. All of these “presenters” are in the same boat as you but some are just a bit more advanced or versed lets say which is why they have the confidence to get up and preach. Yes the presenters are very sharp and are good at a variety of things BUT they also learn from each other on the sidelines all the time as well and even from sitting into other presentations themselves. Just because you’re not presenting doesn’t mean you’re dumb, not as good as a coder, etc. It just means you’re interested in collaborating and learning what others are doing. Just because you’re already very smart and know lets say design patterns well is no excuse not to go to a code camp. There are MANY smart developers there and it’s just a really great place to collaborate and learn together and ping ideas or trends off each other.
For instance I was talking with a presenter about the Spark View Engine vs. NHaml. Learned that NHaml’s framework was or is being refactored and there are some rendering issues with NHaml such as it adding unwanted line breaks in your mark up whereas Spark doesn’t pose this problem. I have not attempted to use the Spark view engine for ASP.NET MVC yet, so this is good to know and these are the types of things you learn quickly while attending and talking to people at a code camp.
Here is a great a list of terms I wrote down from various discussions or presentations throughout the day, that I thought was a great list for researching more on. Some are basic concepts, some are not and some I really need to just brush up on again after having not used them in a while. Many of these terms I already sort of know but some of them now I’m looking up again in a new light for use with a new technique or purpose. (forgive me if I spelled some of these wrong, I did not look up and verify all of these, just scribbled them down today).
And Some Good Resources I wrote down:
So I hope you take a day out and try a Code Camp. It’s not you sitting down coding, the presenters are! You’re learning the entire time and getting up to speed on the latest.
Print | posted on Saturday, May 30, 2009 10:46 PM
