TechEd 2012 Wrap Up
Sunday, June 17, 2012
This was probably the best TechEd I’ve been to. For the first time, I was able to follow along in all the sessions I attended and was able to learn something in each one. This is much better than previous TechEds where I felt totally lost and behind on technology.
Here’s a few things that I learned…
- Visual Studio 2012 is pretty awesome, must start using it ASAP. (I’ve actually been trying it out already. It really is awesome.)
- Team Foundation Server 2012 is pretty awesome, must start using it ASAP (cloud version available atTFSPreview.com). It’s much better integrated with VS2012. I’m most impressed by its project management capabilities… it can replace MS Project, especially if we use Agile (see next point).
- Agile is a much better way to manage software projects than Waterfall. I need to learn more about it.
- Unit testing and Test Driven Development is worth doing. I need to learn more about this too.
- Async and parallel programming is the future. Lots of ways to leverage async on the web to increase ASP.NET performance and also to do really cool realtime stuff. It’s not just about parallel processing. .NET 4.5 makes asynchrony pretty simple.
- Lots of new features in ASP.NET in both WebForms and MVC… too many to list out here.
- In recent years, things like the iPhone and the iPad have raised the standards for** user experience**. It’s no longer enough to produce applications that just “does the job”, users now expect our apps to look great, work great, and be easy to use. We need to think about UX design in every new project from now on. It cannot be ignored or left as an afterthought. (Although our users are using BlackBerrys, so maybe we’re OK!)
Orlando is also a pretty awesome place if you’re into theme parks and thrill rides. The weather held up for the attendee party, which was at Universal Islands of Adventure. It was a fun night… the best attendee party out of the 3 TechEd’s I’ve been to.
I didn’t get a whole lot in terms of swag, but did end up with few shirts and some other things. Matt won a Nokia Lumia 900 and I won an XBox!
This was probably the best TechEd I’ve been to. For the first time, I was able to follow along in all the sessions I attended and was able to learn something in each one. This is much better than previous TechEds where I felt totally lost and behind on technology.
Here’s a few things that I learned…
- Visual Studio 2012 is pretty awesome, must start using it ASAP. (I’ve actually been trying it out already. It really is awesome.)
- Team Foundation Server 2012 is pretty awesome, must start using it ASAP (cloud version available atTFSPreview.com). It’s much better integrated with VS2012. I’m most impressed by its project management capabilities… it can replace MS Project, especially if we use Agile (see next point).
- Agile is a much better way to manage software projects than Waterfall. I need to learn more about it.
- Unit testing and Test Driven Development is worth doing. I need to learn more about this too.
- Async and parallel programming is the future. Lots of ways to leverage async on the web to increase ASP.NET performance and also to do really cool realtime stuff. It’s not just about parallel processing. .NET 4.5 makes asynchrony pretty simple.
- Lots of new features in ASP.NET in both WebForms and MVC… too many to list out here.
- In recent years, things like the iPhone and the iPad have raised the standards for** user experience**. It’s no longer enough to produce applications that just “does the job”, users now expect our apps to look great, work great, and be easy to use. We need to think about UX design in every new project from now on. It cannot be ignored or left as an afterthought. (Although our users are using BlackBerrys, so maybe we’re OK!)
Orlando is also a pretty awesome place if you’re into theme parks and thrill rides. The weather held up for the attendee party, which was at Universal Islands of Adventure. It was a fun night… the best attendee party out of the 3 TechEd’s I’ve been to.
I didn’t get a whole lot in terms of swag, but did end up with few shirts and some other things. Matt won a Nokia Lumia 900 and I won an XBox!