I had an early second day at Code PaLOUsa, which started with an alarm that was too loud and too early – mainly because I spent time late Monday evening refining my talk on Visual Studio Code. I’d like to say that I made it to all of the sessions I had planned to see on Tuesday morning, but the morning took a different turn – and I’m glad it did. The majority of my morning was a series of hallway conversations with other developers, business analysts, and project managers.

During the pre-keynote lunch presentation, Jeremy Bytes shared the concept of “becoming a social developer.” I’ve heard Jeremy speak before on .NET Rocks and read his blog. Something I’ve pulled away from Jeremy’s talks is to become more social, you need to step outside of your comfort zone. I’m naturally introverted, but I know I need to be more social. The problem is, being social is uncomfortable for me – I don’t like it, because most people I talk with have no interest in my interests. Non-devs (mere mortals) aren’t interested in software architecture, automated build and release pipelines, API versioning strategies, how to organize and structure your code, Agile development practices, or application lifecycle management.

But wait!

I’m at a developer conference, and everyone here is interested in these things. I get to actually talk about hard core geek topics – and I’ve been enjoying every minute.

Learning about Mobile App Choices

I started the afternoon by checking out Heather Downing’s talk on mobile architecture decisions. Heather spoke about the foundations of mobile application development, thinking about choosing the appropriate platform (based on the requirements), thinking about security first and integrating it into your development process, determining where and how to interact with your data (device-side, server-side, or hybrid), online/offline capabilities and requirements, and ensuring to account for the extra time you may need to deploy (because iOS deployment and acceptance in the store can be complex and time consuming).

Heading Out Early

Although I’m heading out early on the second day, it was so glad to have met and talked with developers throughout the day. I wish I could have stayed for the attendee reception; however, date night with my wife and an amazing concert by Earth, Wind, & Fire and Chicago was planned months ahead of time.