Asking the Mountain To Come To You

Who Would Fowler Bomb?

In the post mentioned above, Ian frames “the cause” of the Alt.NET folks as a bit of a war (emphasis mine):

Sometimes effecting change can seem like a war. There are a lot of people who have established comfortable positions for themselves as prophets of a technology and do not want that comfortable home disrupted. Unfortunately we cannot accept the lure of that comfortable position without our skills eroding and failing to keep pace with the wider industry. This necessitates conflict between the prophets of the new and the saints of the old: "The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Perhaps a bit over the top, but I don’t think I’d be blamed if I said that Alt.NET is nothing if not “sensational” – well at least in the past.

OK, I’ll roll with this analogy – why not. I’m not really an Alt.NET person, as I mention above, but I’ll play the role of Blackwater for the Alt.NET guys and I’ll offer my help in a strategic sense (I play a lot of military video games – so this should be fun). Let’s see if I can put together a new plan of attack for them – a “surge” if you will.

First – what’s Alt.NET trying to do anyway? We need to be sure we understand the objectives before the Surge strategy is formulated. Let’s ask Laribee:

What does it mean to be ALT.NET? In short it signifies:

1. You’re the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
2. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
3. You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
4. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.)
   
   When tools, practices, or methods become mainstream it’s time to get contrarian; time to look for new ways of doing things; time to shake it up.

OK – sounds good. I know it’s changed over time but Laribee’s writing is pretty concise and I think captures the “We’re not gonna take it” thing. Microsoft has strayed a bit in terms of guiding their platform developers and a group of people are finding that they’ve found some better ways to make software and want to share it.

Rather than spin my wheels I’ll implement the DRY battle plan. Sun Tzu figured this out a long time ago – so let’s see what he would do if he was reborn today and handed a keyboard and a copy of Visual Studio…

The Surge

Below are some core strategies from Sun Tzu, who needs no introduction. These strategies have been followed for victory in just about every conflict known to man and if it’s a war we’re in – he can help us out. FALL IN!

A leader leads by example, not force

Simple enough – I think it would be fair to say that many people think that Alt.NET is a bag of cranky little punks that like to talk a lot of crap. This isn’t the case, of course, but it’s the perception. Perhaps take some time to educate or maybe roll out Open Source applications that help developers do a better job. Perception is a hard thing to change and not something you can address in a paragraph – short of saying “stop trying so hard”.

Smile more, Tweet less, blog more code and make it approachable.

To know your Enemy, you must become your enemy

If Microsoft is behind all this, which seems to be the accusation, then it might be a good move to get inside the ranks and find out precisely why they do what they do. Become one of them either as an insider or by just going to conferences and getting to know the people who make the decisions. Learn their moves, understand their motives.

Many of the Alt.NET folks already know these people – they’re very approachable and, believe it or not, are humans.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious

Microsoft is a very large company with many, many resources – banging at the gates by writing cranky posts won’t work. Understanding that Microsoft has no reason to bend to the pressure of the blogosphere is perhaps the most critical thing to understand. They want to make money – as all companies do – and keeping the revenue supply lines open is of top importance. One of the ways they do this is by enabling a mass of developers to build products based on their technology.

They need you and this is leverage on your part. Understand that – don’t overplay it.

To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill

Work your leverage, but skillfully. If it’s not working in your company, then why fight? In Ian’s post it almost sounds like [Crazy War Zone]:

We have by no means won this struggle. It is still being played out every day, despite the fact that the solutions may seem obvious to us.In some ways we have only reached the point of witnessing the creation of evasions, half-truths,and lies as to why such practices are inappropriate to an organization or covering up incorrect adoption.

Alt.Net was always about challenging these 'comfortable lies'. As a community we cannot become content to live with the 'comfortable lies'.

It’s a tad dour but if that’s the case – well what you’re doing apparently isn’t working. Combining everything that Master Sun has told us thus far – well the strategy is right in front your nose…

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Stop using Microsoft tools. For some of you that would mean leaving your jobs and having to massively adjust your lives both professionally and personally. But if you work in a war zone and it means that much to you then your commitment must be complete.

It would also mean that you would lose that little shine of celebrity that the cause has brought you as you would become a n00b in your new framework of choice. That wouldn’t bother you would it? Many prominent people from “the movement” have benefitted highly from their positions – while still pulling in a paycheck for their work on the Microsoft stack.

This isn’t serving your cause as it’s not making your enemy take you seriously. Master Sun would be very displeased.

One of the comments (from Wayne Molina) on Ian’s post seems to echo this strategy:

I think the problem, honestly, is that most of the Alt.net guys jumped ship to Rails.

I think so too. Well maybe not “left for good” but I know many folks who have started using other frameworks – most notably Rails – and are slowly making their way to the exit. There is a a definite growth of apathy (if Twitter is any kind of gauge) from the “thought leaders” of “the movement” and generally I think it’s fair to say that they have moved on.

Is this a good thing for Microsoft? Not if they start to flex their positions straddling other platforms – leading a Geek Exodus (if you will). The key, of course, takes us back to the first point above and the whole thing becomes a recursive strategy that works on a leverage point… if the developer base begins to erode, then Microsoft will be very interested in listening.

So – it’s up to you. Just like before. Just like always.

Yes, You.

First let me add this: I’m staying comfortably detached from all of this and no, I’m not advocating anyone change platforms – I’m just the Blackwater guy here. I’ll be honest and tell you I see a lot of contradictions in the level of angst that emanates from the Alt.NET community – but no one’s perfect.

For me, education is the best possible thing you can do for people – showing them the alternatives out there they can choose to use, or not. My opinions don’t really matter – these are all just tools – people should make up their own mind. As much as some would like to believe it I’ve never championed one platform over another – HOWEVER I’ll be happy to tell you what I like and why, and then suggest that maybe you just might want to learn a bit about what I’ve found.

That said – what about you? I know many people can’t really afford to walk out of their jobs and make a big change – but then aren’t you asking the mountain to come to you?