Getting Outside the Microsoft Echo Chamber

Several of the ASP.NET MVC books cite the fact that the MVC pattern itself is very old, wasn’t created by Microsoft and has been deployed within web applications on other technology stacks for quite some time. Unfortunately, the Microsoft developer community tends to be rather insular, so many developers aren’t aware of the work that’s occurred in other communities and/or simply aren’t interested.

This is a mistake. Since these other communities are rather mature compared to the ASP.NET MVC crowd, they are typically a great place to glimpse a possible future and influences on the Microsoft MVC platform. In other words, Microsoft’s late entry into the MVC pattern for web development means that our community should be working to leverage all the knowledge and experience discovered by existing communities, which is especially beneficial since we have a minimal amount of “legacy” to overcome (both code and thinking).

Of course, there’s only so much time in the day and, if you’re at all like me, it’s a struggle just to keep up with developments in the .NET space, let alone a host of other languages and frameworks. To counter this problem, the approach that I use is to mix in non-.NET podcasts to my daily commute, so that I can at least hear about developments in other communities and follow-up on items that interest me when I get a chance. Here are some of the podcasts that I’m currently listening to with this end in mind:

• Rails Envy – A weekly newscast covering the Ruby on Rails community.
• The Java Posse – A long-standing Java community podcast that discusses a broad cross-section of developments within Java.
• FLOSS Weekly – A non-technology specific podcast focusing on any kind of open source software; since it’s a Leo Laporte production, it’s fairly popular, but is a great way to hear about interesting projects on lesser-known tech stacks.

I wouldn’t put any of these into the “hidden gems” category as they are all well-known. Furthermore, I tend to change which specific podcasts I use to eavesdrop on other development communities pretty regularly, so which podcasts you choose is less important than the fact that you get outside .NET land and check out what’s going on in other parts of the industry. Doing so with podcasts tends to be a good way to accomplish this with a limited time investment.