A team of MSDN Events Managers have put together a professionally-produced, non-goof-off, “reality” show called The Code Room about a team of .NET developers who are tasked with writing an e-commerce app in 5 hours – before their laptop batteries run out.
The pilot episode takes place in Houston in conjunction with a presentation on Whidbey/ASP.NET 2.0 by our buddy Russ Fustino, who moved from New England to Florida a little over a year ago.
The show is an amazingly (especially for Microsoft) constructive piece of marketing which does a super job of highlighting some of Whidbey’s new features.
It also is a pretty down-to-earth, realistic portrayal of a web developer’s charrette – the 5 hour before-the-batteries-die period is roughly from 9:30 PM to 2:30 AM. Done one of those lately?
The 3 developers – Chris Menegay, Scott Bellware, and Tracy Sawyer – are a heads-up, likeable bunch, and their comments are great, patentable fodder for the next generation of .NET SWAG:
“Ignoring my management has been the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“Some people out there don’t like to work with women developers.”
“Who expects us to read specs?!”
If you don’t have time to watch the video, at least check out the summary on TheServerSide.NET.