I had the pleasure to attend the Iowa Code Camp on Saturday, May 3, and I have to say I am very impressed with what they were able to accomplish. By partnering with great sponsors like the University of Iowa IT Services Department (who not only volunteered their offices but also provided coffee and drinks; talk about going above and beyond the call of duty!), ASI Computer Systems, Robert Half, Magenic, QCI, and a handful of software vendors including Microsoft, they hosted a really special one-day event for .NET developers in Eastern Iowa. If you attended the event, check out the Contributors list and thank them for their stellar support.

The Event
There were about 100 people in attendance, not including the couple dozen people who staffed, supported, and spoke at the event. There were five tracks with five sessions per track. They had a series of sessions that tied together thematically and built upon one another, in topic series on SharePoint, ASP.NET, XAML, and LINQ. They also planned what I thought was a spectacular idea — they held back a slot late in the afternoon and asked attendees to vote for a session they wanted to repeat in the final hour of the event. And to cap it off, a local firm (whose name I regrettably forget... if someone from the Code Camp will contact me and let me know I'll update this post and give credit where credit is due; update: Bryan Sampica sent me an update on the Iowa Code Camp dinner — he informed me that TekSystems and a small computer company in Davenport Iowa sponsored it; thanks to both!) hosted a dinner for up to 100 people.

Sounds like it was a great event, doesn't it? Trust me, it was!

Who's Who
From Microsoft, Jeff Brand and I traveled to participate and support the Code Camp. Jeff delivered two presentations: a walkthrough of Silverlight Streaming featuring a custom player Jeff calls MyTube as well as his patented introductory presentation on LINQ. I attended to "mingle" (I am management overhead, after all) and meet with community leaders from Eastern Iowa. I used to live in Cedar Rapids from 1993 to 1996, so it was a real joy to see how the .NET community had taken root in Eastern Iowa. As an added bonus I got to see some old friends, too.

I also had the pleasure of meeting several of the .NET developer community leaders from around Iowa, as well as many of the other folks involved in planning the Code Camp. Javier Lozano, from the Des Moines .NET User Group, was there, and was one of the Code Camp leaders. He also presented a talk on ASP.NET. I met Greg Sohl and Chris Sutton, who were facilitators of the code camp; they are both also involved in the Cedar Rapids developer community. I had lunch with them both and we had a really great discussion about the developer community. I also met Bryan Sampica, who helped with marketing the event and delivered a couple of talks on XAML and LINQ; and Greg Wilson who helped schedule speakers and spoke on SQL Server.

There were several other folks there that I met, and probably too many to list. Suffice it to say the community and thought leaders of Iowa banded together to deliver an outstanding event.

A Worthwhile Weekend
So, was it worth it to spend a weekend in Iowa? Yes! This was a really well done event, with a lot of professionalism and polish. Great speakers, great venue, great food, great coffee (a must for me in the morning), and a great format combined to make this almost feel like a one-day TechEd event. There was a little something for everyone, and they have bold plans to drive more Iowa Code Camps moving forward. If the success of this event is any indication, the developer community of Iowa can count on something really special every six or so months.

Note to Self
Learn from Larry Clarkin: next time remember to bring the camera and grab a few photos to include with the post.

I was recently listening to a Spaghetti Code Podcast with host Jeff Brand and guest Jason Bock, a Microsoft C# MVP. These two blokes were talking about languages, from (classic) VB to C++ to Java to C# and F#. And their discussion took me down memory lane. Oh, and it inspired me to write a quick little post about the podcast.

Spaghetti Code Podcast
First, what is this podcast, and why am I mentioning it. Well, Spaghetti Code Podcast is a series of audio podcasts with host Jeff Brand, a Developer Evangelist on my team, and various guests from around Jeff's stomping grounds in Minneapolis, MN. He's played host to Rocky Lhotka, Shannon Braun, Matt Milner, Scott Colestock, and others. You can get his podcast on iTunes or from his RSS feed. And if you listen to the latest podcast, a recap of MIX with Rocky and Shannon, be sure to stay around for the ender. I was rolling on the floor laughing. Jeff's a hoot!

Memory Lane
Listening to this podcast took me down memory lane. Well, actually, what triggered this trip down that dusty old road was a question from Jeff. He basically asked "What languages have you programmed in, Jason?" And that was all it took to get me thinking, especially when Jason talked about programming a text-based Zork-like adventure game in BASIC on an Apple II way back in high school.

I started thinking of all the languages I have used at one time or another. Like Jason, I started with BASIC, but I used an IBM PC in 1986 and I wrote two programs. The first was a text-based take on Space Invaders. The second was to code in a string of HEX code I found that played a 10-second clip of "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting". (Tip: the IBM PC sucked for sound. To get it right, I rewrote it on Commodore 64 and, later, the Amiga. Amazing mono audio!)

As I moved on from BASIC, I started thinking about all the programming languages I learned, and for an added challenge I started listing them in the order I learned them and where I learned them.

Well, the list started to become a bit lengthy. I decided to not include scripting languages. Two reasons. One, I'm not terribly good at them. (Yes, I can muddle through JavaScript, and I am passable at VBScript.) Two, the list is long enough. I also decided to keep it strictly to languages, so no frameworks or supporting libraries like the data access soup of the late 1990s (ODBC, OLEDB, ADO, JDBC, JDO, and ADO.NET).

Admittedly I did include multiple versions of COBOL and VB, and I added one UI "framework" in CICS. I think of them more as career milestones — or particularly painful consulting engagements. But I digress...

A Renaissance Programmer
Why the lengthy list? Truthfully it's partly a reminder of where I came from over the past nearly 20 years. Though it is a pointed example of how easily one can learn a variety of languages. Part of what reminded me of that was a quote Jason referenced during his interview, and I am paraphrasing here, "Once you make a habit of learning languages, they become easier and easier to learn."

There is great truth in that, and I believe it whole-heartedly. Were there programming languages that I found difficult? Oh, yes, Assembly was a killer course, and Prolog wrapped me around the axle. But I also found that over time learning various languages became easier and easier. Sure there are quirks with certain languages. I've looked at Ruby and Python and F#. There are unique traits about each.

But you know what? There are common elements, too. Conditional logic looks not that dissimilar between various languages. Variable declaration is often recognizable. And with the "big languages", there is more in common than different.

VB.NET, C#, and Java are all incredibly similar in core syntax. Sure, one has begin-end blocks, and another requires a strong pinky finger... I mean, uses curly braces and semicolons. But if you look beyond the core dialect of the languages and consider how each language tackles variable declaration, conditional logic, method invocation, there are many similarities. The crux of a language, really, is the underlying frameworks and libraries you're going to be using.

Favorite Things
One of the questions Jeff asked during his interview was "What is your favorite language feature?" I won't spoil Jason's answers — you need to listen to the podcast for that — but it got me thinking about my favorite language features. Now, I'm not talking about tools like Visual Studio, or class libraries. I'm talking about capabilities built into the language.

My all-time favorite? Smalltalk's code blocks capability. You could literally read syntax from a database, pass it into a method signature, and have the method execute the code you read from the database at runtime. It was cool, and this capability enabled us to do some neat things. Second to that was Smalltalk's ability to change the core language behaviors in code. On a lark, a co-worker and I pulled a prank on one of our colleagues who, regrettably, forgot to lock his computer. We reprogrammed integer to only accept odd numbers. Trust me, that's fun times for a geek.

Other favorites include declaring throws in Java, rewriting memory be branching registers in Assembly (for more fun times, geek-style, try burping out some executable code into executing program memory space; it's a sure-fire way to cause some major heartburn for mainframe operators), and — occasionally — leveraging VB's late binding behavior, especially when programming against the Office object model.

What Language Are You?
Now, back to the original question...

For me, I prefer the VB syntax. Perhaps it was years of COBOL and VB programming. Perhaps I just have a weak pinky finger. But I have an affinity for VB, so I code in VB, I present in VB, and I demo in VB. I occasionally work in C#, too, and I am often forced to deal with JavaScript. But for most things I prefer VB. Including my certifications. And that's the language I am.

So... What language are you? Let me know.

On April 26, 2008, my colleague Zain Naboulsi will be hosting a Heroes Happen Here launch event in Second Life. He's got the full launch agenda, covering Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. If you're active in Second Life — or even if you're not — join Zain and his team as they make history by running a launch event in Second Life.

Claiming my Technorati Profile...