ASP.NET MVC Framework Sample Project (CodeCampServer)

Back in early January, I jumped at the opportunity to answer Jeffery Palermo's call for OSS developers to help out with his new project dubbed CodeCampServer and used as a vehicle for exploring the new ASP.NET MVC Framework.  I had hit the ground running and helping out in any way I could with a bunch of checkins and chatter on the groups and learned a lot.  Unfortunately, the whole of February I was pretty much heads-down coding Infragistics' new property - Pixel8 - so I wasn't able to be as active as I'd hoped, but I'm looking forward to getting back into the loop and back into churning out some code.

Before I joined the project, I have been a pretty avid reader of the CodeBetter blogs for some time and for the most part I really appreciate not only what they have to say but especially the new concepts, ideas and viewpoints they can provide.  I often related most with Jeffery's posts and being involved in a project with him has been not only fun but incredibly educational.  Jeffery's emphasis on agile methodologies and concepts - particularly TDD and composition over inheritance - were a refreshing change from what I've been traditionally exposed to and it's nice to start branching out.

CodeCampServer is definitely only going to be a nice, useful piece of software.  However, I think its best use may just be as a learning tool for anyone looking to dive in to any of the myriad concepts and practices the project exemplifies, such as:

• ASP.NET MVC (of course...)
• test-driven design and development
• composition over inheritance
• using StructureMap
• using NHibernate
• setting up a build environment using NAnt
• ...and probably many more that I'm not even able to pick out!

So, if you're interested in learning about any of those topics, be sure to head on over to the CodeCampServer source code repository browser available online and glance through the code... or download the whole lot and run it for yourself!

It's been a real joy to be involved in this project, and I'd like to thank Jeffrey and Ben for working so hard to set it up and keep it going.  Plus, if the quality of their up-coming book is anything close to the quality of this project, it's bound to be an incredible tomb of knowledge.