Oren Eini

CEO of RavenDB

a NoSQL Open Source Document Database

Get in touch with me:

oren@ravendb.net +972 52-548-6969

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time to read 1 min | 166 words

This is merely a simple observation. I had a chance to talk with a few people recently, and I heard something that really bothered me. Sadly, this is not a new thing, but it is still extremely annoying and disrespectful.

Basically, the problem is that concerns that are being brought up are dismissed as unrealistic, idealist and non workable in the real world. The people who bring up those concerns are also dismissed as radical tree huggers with no concept of how to build things in the field.

The reason that I think this is stupid, insulting and disrespectful is that a lot of the people bringing up those concerns are real world practitioners. It is more than just merely annoying to hear that.

Calling a raised problem an idealist issue or a perfectionist problem is an eventual guarantee that the feedback and concerns being brought up will dry up. And that the next feedback received will be in terms that aren’t favorable.

time to read 2 min | 350 words

Last week I participated in ALT.Net Seattle, which was quite interesting. It used the same open spaces format as most ALT.Net conference, and I can honestly say that it was a good experience to most of the attendees.

It did not, however, had the same style of interaction. One of the things that I really enjoyed in the previous ALT.Net conferences is the level of interaction and participation. In this instance, I think that a majority of the people arrived mostly to soak in the information. That changed the dynamics of the conference, and it was quite visible in all the sessions that I was part of.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that it was bad, or that you must participate, I am pointing out a difference between the current conference and the previous ones.

I think that something like that is inevitable as the community grows, because at this stage in the game we are moving from the early adopters to the pragmatists. The problem is that we are currently in that gap, where the ideas only begin to go through:

image

It is my hope that when we finish cross this chasm, we will be able to return back to the same style of interaction that we have had in the past. The problem is, as I see it, that currently too many of the attendees felt uncomfortable to speak. Once again it was the case of the best conversations happening in the hallways and at dinners, when people could relax.

I think that as we see the people in the wider community gain experience and confidence, we will go back into the same vibrant discussions and learning. In the meanwhile, I intend to do my best to push the community forward toward that time.

It was a good conference, even if the highlight for me was the air hockey table talk.

time to read 2 min | 269 words

I am writing about documentation at the moment, and I found myself writing the following:

I don’t think that I can emphasize enough how important it is to have a good first impression in the DSL. It can literally make or break your project. We should make above reasonable efforts to ensure that the first impression of the user from our system would be positive.

This includes investing time in building good looking UI, and snappy graphics. They might not actually have a lot of value for the project from a technical perspective, not even from the point of day to day usage in some cases, but they are crucially important from social engineering perspective.

A project that looks good is pleasant to use, easier to demo and in general easier to get funding for.

This also includes the documentation, if we can do something in a short amount of time; we get a level of trust from the users. “Hey, I can make it go bang!” is important to gain acceptance. The first stage should be a very easy one, even if you have to design to enable that specifically.

After reading that, I quickly added this as well:

Note, however, that you should be wary of creating a demoware project, one that is strictly focused on demoing well, and not actually add value in real world conditions. Such projects may demo well, and get funding and support, but they tend to fall into the land of tortureware very rapidly, making things harder to do, instead of easier.

Beware of the demoware.

time to read 1 min | 147 words

I am going to give a workshop or two at the ALT.Net Austin in the end of October. Those will be free (as in beer) and will be recorded & available on the net afterward. Right now I want to do on on writing DSLs, but I have another which is basically blank at the moment. I have too many subjects that I can talk about, and too many levels at which I can talk about them.

So, this is your chance to help me. If you are going to be there, what would you like to have a workshop about?

And no, a question like NHibernate is not acceptable, it is  too broad. Are we talking about NHibernate best practices, high scalability, tips and tricks or advance usages. I can do a three hours workshop on any of them.

Suggestions?

time to read 2 min | 262 words

imageThis is my 3,500th post, wow! Looks like there is some future in this blogging business after all.

On Thursday evening and Friday we had the first ALT.Net Israel conference. I would like to thanks the attendees, for a really awesome couple of days.

The sponsors, Sela Group, Red Gate, Type Mock, JetBrains and SQLink, also deserve a round of applause.

I had fun. I am not sure what happened, but I arrived in the morning and suddenly it was over. Didn't feel any time pass at all.

I was honestly surprised by both the amount of people that have arrived and the quality of discussion that we had. I have hoped, but had hard time believing that this would happen. I am not sure where everyone was hiding before, but I hope (and am certain) that we will be able to create a strong community and keep this going.

We managed to get a lot of what went there on tape, and we are currently uploading stuff so the rest of the community will be able to watch it as well. I am looking forward to seeing Udi's reaction to the mess we did of the SOA session, in particular :-)

I am still in the process of uploading the videos I took, hopefully it will be finished by the time you read this post. You can get them at this address: http://www.viddler.com/explore/ayende/videos/

I repeat, awesome event.

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