Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

As we approach the new year and many of us reflect on the one that just passed, I find myself compelled to ask the question - are we as human being’s becoming spiritually (not in a religious sense) lost in the after glow of technological advance? Certainly technology has changed my life in a most profound way. I was once a musician and recording engineer and to execute my job required some technological expertise coupled with some artistic flair (I hope). After changing careers and moving into software development, I find that my creative desires are to some extent still fulfilled however my sense of shared experience and the actual amount of time I spend developing my skills ‘with others’ is not comparable at all. No more rehearsals, recording sessions, writing groups, all of which required much human interaction and debate, a lot of which took place in social settings. These days I do most of my learning in isolation, sitting in front of the very computer screen that I see now as I type this post. It is clear that even in my constant education and expression via this blog that I am communicating, however it is still seems to lack some of the interpersonal aspects that traditional face to face interaction can bring.

The Question:

Sometimes it’s not clear whether technology is improving our general quality of life or not. Any thoughts?

Regardless, I hope that 2009 brings an abundance to .NET goodness to one and all. My aim is to be a little more socially inclined next year.

I first posted about some learning materials just recently and during the time between then and now I discovered some more good introductory material that can be found on Stefan Cruysbergh’s personal web site. Stefan has produced a three part series to introducing the basics in the Entity Framework and then some more detailed investigation in the final instalment of his series of posts. Stefan also has a blog separate to his web site.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

If you read my previous post listing Julie Lerman’s tutorials and the DNR TV episodes with Dan Simmons you should find this series of posts from Stefan a nice accompaniment to those.

I have Julie’s book on order and look forward to reading that when it arrives and a few more are now starting to surface. Joydip Kanjilal has a tutorial and Roger Jennings is working on a book as is Jim Wightman and MS Press have one on the way also.

Also, I have also recently posted about a new version of my implementation of the Specification Pattern for Entity Framework that enables the use of that pattern to build dynamic queries and test Entities for equality. Currently I am working on the Repository Pattern to accompany the Specification Pattern and will also get around to working on NHibernate like Fetching Strategies as per my LINQ To SQL framework that included all three features. Download the code for an early look at the refactor here.

I thought it might be useful to include the entire code base from this previous post with the change to the Specification Pattern alone at this stage, in case anyone wanted to see the changes incrementally as I refactor the entire library. Time to version this code as it may be production bound before too long! The code is in the usual place here.