INSPIONS Inc

“Understanding a technology is only a starting point. Applying it in the right context is what matters”

This has been our core belief and guiding principle and also one of the distinct values we provide in our Training programs. Most other training programs excel at teaching ‘what is’ and ‘how to use’ technology.   Our Programs go beyond and put participants directly in the context of real world application scenarios and help them choose a strategy, concept or a technique out of all available options and given a set of unique constraints of a project. We teach key techniques and considerations that will help to evaluate an approach, not just from technical point of view, but also from the business value point of view.  So the focus has always been not just to learn but to apply.

However, most of this content like case studies, brainstorming sessions, evaluation techniques and guidelines is  currently deeply integrated with the rest of the curriculum in a course.  Every participant must attend the full program to leverage this knowledge, even though they may be well conversant with the ‘what’ and ‘how to use’ of the technology already. 

Over the last couple of months, we have been extracting these case studies, brainstorming sessions, evaluation techniques and guidelines in order to create a course on its own, to address this need for Experienced developers. Today we are happy to announce the name of this  new program, ‘Contextual .NET’, a program for the experienced .NET Developers.  The course will go live in the first week of October.  I will publish more details of the program: detailed content, duration, location and fee in the next couple of days.

Get ready to get contextual.  Apply technology you already know in a way that really matters, to the business.

Not just technology, but what matters.

Google may be helping us to find content faster and better. But Google is definitely changing the way we learn, think, organize and work.

Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it’s changing the way people read and process information. We’ve come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and there’s not much of that to be found online.

– Nicholas Carr

( Read/Listen to NPR Interview with Nicholas Carr here  Or Download MP3 )

You can read the first article that voiced the concern and later grew to a book called “The Shallows” here: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”.

The Productivity Paradox

Little experiment that is worth trying, if you haven’t yet : Try blocking access to Internet for your Software development team and see how it would impact the overall productivity and quality of the team.

There is a heated discussion going on at LinkedIn in .NET People’s group about what is the most preferred .NET Programming Language : VB or C#.  I don’t want to add fuel to the fire, but just wanted to point out search patterns for C# and VB.NET on Google. As usual, interpretation is left to you.

While discussing about the trend charts of .NET Versions over lunch yesterday, the discussion led to ASP.NET MVC and how does it fare against Ruby On Rails (ROR). Ofcourse, we are just talking about Search Patterns here.  So here is the search Patterns chart between RoR and ASP.NET MVC.

It is quite a surprising chart though. Try interpreting the chart and let us know your thoughts.

Listen to this wonderful presentation by Kent Beck on Developer Testing.

Kent Beck is widely recognized as the father of eXtreme Programming and JUnit. Kent’s other contributions to software development include patterns for software, and the rediscovery of test-first programming. He is the author/co-author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2nd Edition, Contributing to Eclipse, Test-Driven Development: By Example, Planning Extreme Programming, The Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, and the JUnit Pocket Guide. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon. Source : Kent Beck on Developer Testing.