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Geek Vacation Day #1: Going Native 2012

I’m m taking another busman’s holiday and attending Going Native 2012. Like my GPU Technology Conference trip a few years ago this is a geek vacation rather than work for Microsoft. Although bizaarly it’s taking place at the Microsoft Conference Center on campus, it feels a little weird to pay money to go spend the day at work. Turns out that was the lowest friction approach to attending.

So far it’s been well worth while. Today’s keynote was by Bjarne Stroustrup who focused on C++11 style. Really it’s this new style of programming with the Standard Library (in conjunction with lambdas), the RAII pattern (for example smart pointers) and a host of other features that reawakened my interest in C++. I can have much of the elegance of C# with the performance of C++.

In other news today’s WSJ has a front page article on the agile practice of daily standups.

WSJ.com – No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs

I was actually interviewed by Rachel Silverman for this article but I’m not quoted in it. Nice to see one of my favorite agile (with a small ‘a’) practices getting some coverage somewhere like the WSJ.

Hopefully this post signals my return to the World of blogging and by implication having fun playing with and delivering software, rather than not having fun not delivering anything. 2012 is a brand new year. It will be better.