If you’d like a quick introduction to using SliM with .Net, Mike Stockdale is working on an implementation and here’s a quick writeup of what you need to do to get it working: Using Slim.Net in FitNesse

Tonight is our first meeting, at the ThoughtWorks offices in the Aon building downtown. If you’re going and you haven’t RSVP’ed, either send a tweet to @chicagoscala or reply here ASAP!

Hope to see you there. Our meetings will be the 3rd Thursday of each month.

There are times when I sit down to work on some piece of code and I see a bit of duplication. I remove it. Then I see a bit more, and a bit more. When I’m done with all of my extractions, I look back at the code and notice that it’s increased in size about 20 or 30 percent. If I’m working with someone else, it’s often a shock for them. After all, we are used to thinking that code gets smaller when we remove duplication. Often it does, but not always.

I am often asked: “How should I get started with SOLID principles?” Given the recent interest and controversy about the issue, it’s probably time I gave a written answer.

Joel, Jeff,

Here is an open letter to the two of you that I hope we can use in our upcoming StackOverflow #40 podcast. I won’t post it on my blog until we’ve been able to iterate it a bit. I’ve spent several hours on this trying to balance the tone. It used to be a lot longer <grin>.

Ron Jeffries wrote a wonderful blog about how we kid ourselves that there is a tradeoff between quality and speed. Isn’t there?

I was riding my exercise bike, listening to Stack Overflow #38 when I heard Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky say “Quality just doesn’t matter that much.” I nearly fell off my bike.

I was at a meeting of the Chicago Software Craftsmanship group last night. Dave Hoover and Paul Pagel were talking about the different apprenticeship models at Obtiva and 8thLight.

I’m organizing a group in Chicago for people interested in Scala, called the Chicago Area Scala Enthusiasts (CASE). If you’re interested, join the google group for more information.

I’m in a bad mood today. It’s 12 degrees below zero outside. My reward for an hour on the elliptical trainer at they gym yesterday was gaining another 0.5 lb. on the scale this morning. And looking at the futures market, my ever dwindling retirement funds are going to sink even lower this morning. I decided to focus my frustrations towards an attack on that cutesy little phrase that we all learned in OO 101, “IS-A”.