Ass, meet gear - I think you should get in it.  Otherwise it's going to be ass, meet sling - you're in it.

The mobility group was just announced in front of 60 people, and I'm the main presenter for the first meeting.  That meeting will be Nov 15th - Monday.  Seems like Atlanta likes its .Net on Mondays and its Java on Tuesdays.  Or was that Thursdays?  Either way.

The .Net group meeting was cool - we saw a quick promo of Yukon (thanks Doug Ware) complete with compiled C# functions taking the place of iterative SQL code (no more cursors!?!  Gasp!).  We also got a look at Aspect Oriented Design (AOD) in terms of a parameterized, rules based system for designing new applications based on switches and existing components.  Those components exist because you already programmed them.  The basic idea is that once you understand a  problem domain well enough, you can abstract loads of common complexities and make them easily reusable components.  Bundle the components together with some logic that allows you to be all MVC on it's ass and you've got a way to resell the same “application creation” software to different users/companies in that problem domain.  Example - if you can write one credit card application website (where you go to try to get credit cards), you can write them all.  All you need to do is allow the individual companies control the process flow and the look and feel and you're able to sell the same credit card application application (this time I mean a program which presents applications) to everyone who needs it.  And because you're so very smart, you've made it so that the company's operations people can define that flow and look without requiring programmers.  Oh yeah, there were patterns in this application.  Rich said so.

But seriously, Rich did a kick ass job of making me feel like I had already seen stuff like this, just like he said he would.  Nothing new, just a new way of putting lots of disparite ideas into a single place.  Like Great Plains.

-- Matt Ranlett