- Posted by Ian Suttle on September 18, 2007
- Filed under General | Open Source
I love the lifelong learner approach to life. There isn't a soul on this earth who's "knowledgeable enough" or who's an expert at all things. God knows I fall very deep into that category. Software developers are lucky in this sense - there are seemingly endless resources available to learn more about a vast number of technologies and approaches.
Open source projects are one of my favorite ways to learn and expand my imagination. I find it almost exciting (nerd) to review open source implementations to see how the developers think and create. Open source projects also add a certain level of design validity - they're under the scope of the community who has the power to comment and improve upon the design.
One site I've been keeping my eye on over the past couple of months is DotNetKicks. If you aren't familiar with them I encourage you to take a peek. Basically DotNetKicks is the Digg of the .Net development niche. Back in July Gavin Joyce announced DotNetKicks had become an open source project. It took me a couple of months but last night I finally downloaded the source and began to dive in to check out the mechanics of the app. I was pleased by the overall organization of the solution, readability of the code, the use of tests, a multi layer approach, and clever integration of a few external open source projects.
If you're interested in continually growing your skill set you should consider going to school on others' hard work :).
