It’s been one year since CodeBetter.Com first opened it’s doors and  I can hardly believe it’s been that long.  I’ve been reflecting on where to go from here, and looking back at the highlights from the last year.  I’m pretty damn proud of the guys cranking out all of these posts, and pretty damn thankful for all of you out there who have participated in this community.  You’ve kept us in line, helped us learn, and spread the word.  Our RSS subscriptions put us up there as one of the most subscribed to .NET blogging sites in the world. 

You’ve seen all sorts of posts here on CodeBetter, some good, some bad, some irrelevant, and some that even have shaken things up in our little corner of the software development industry.  As I look back on what we’ve posted, here are some of the highlights over the year.

My favorite post has to be Sahil’s 21st Century Slave Labor - in the United States of America.  I just love this kind of radical post.  He calls out companies as being “enterprising body shops - which I prefer to call pimps who are able to make a quick buck by bringing fresh meat to the united states to sell in the software industry.”  Since then, Sahil has become a famous author and speaker, and he’s decided not to overthrow the government, at least until he finishes the next version of his book.

I also have a big soft spot for the little guys who have big ideas about our industry.  One such guy wrote a book, Coding Slave which you can get here for free. His name is Bob Reselmen, and although he’s not a CodeBetter blogger he’s influenced more than a few of us in his writing.  Jay kicked off some good debate about the book with his post Coding Slave: A Message from another Dev Theologian. This was quickly followed up with Darrell’s great post How to fix the software development industry,  I responded saying that what we really should do is Apply Behavior Analysis Theory to the Software Industry.  Of course we’re just idealists, but I’m serious when I say that someday I’m going to establish that CodeBetter.Com commune up in Vermont somewhere.  We’ll all sit around and listen to Sahil’s sitar playing and sing folks songs.

Another case where some of us were blogging some fairly heated posts was when Microsoft announced it’s Team System pricing.  The cool thing about these posts for me was not  how relevant the posts were, but it was a good example of how a community can talk about an important issue, and actually have some good debate. Hey, we even received some direct feedback from the Team System team about these issues.  Here’s an excerpt from Rob Caron’s blog that sums up our discussion here nicely. 

Well, Jeff Lynch rekindled the fire around Team System pricing over on CodeBetter.Com.com ⊕, and he was quickly joined by Steve Hebert ⊕ and Brendan Tompkins ⊕. But I think Darrel Norton helps put things in perspective ⊕. I had several discussions at TechEd last month with attendees, speakers and vendors. I found that Team System pricing will never sit well with some customers, while others feel they are still getting their money’s worth and sometimes more.

But, for me, our crowning achievement has to be Scott Bellware’s recent post about the mis-information around Test-Driven development that used to be published on MSDN,  Microsoft Takes it on the Chin Over Test-Driven Development.  Because of Scott and others, the poop did in fact hit the propeller for Microsoft  and they pulled the article from MSDN.  When I think of all the developers who could have been steered in a bad direction, but weren’t, it makes me pretty dang happy.

Blogging is not the same as it used to be –  heck it’s always been changing.  But I really do think that we’re on the cusp of widespread (as in your grandma has OPML) acceptance and use.  Here at CodeBetter, we’re constantly trying to keep focused, and Blog better, so we can all CodeBe…  well, you get the point.  Bloggers like Jeremy Miller and Scott Bellware are really setting the bar high for us.  I think over the next year, you’ll see less blogging, but more quality content coming from those who do blog.  Hopefully, you’ll get some good quality blogging from us here at CodeBetter.Com..

Thanks for the fantastic year!

-Brendan