What really are the ALT.NET Shared Values?

Phil Haack just wrote a post about Composition over Inheritance and how adopting practices just because they are talked about is silly. I agree 100% with him on this note. Making a design decision without context is like removing your engine from your car to make it go faster. It’s just completely backwards. I have been busy this week and didn’t have a chance to read the thread on the alt.net mailing list but this is just silly to propose.

I think it is very important that the alt.net community doesn’t identify a particular practice as non-alt.net or not. Maybe we can recommend what is considered “good pratice” like the patterns & practices team but no one should be shunned for doing something the way they like it. As Phil states, the alt.net community is in an identity forming stage. A stage of critical mass if you will, and what happens over the next couple of months/years will determine if it is here to stay. Even if for some reason it doesn’t make it, there will always be a community of developers that always strive and look for more.

The reason I gained interest in alt.net is because it is a community where people strive for better. I align myself with this because when I write a piece of code the first thing I do is look at the code I just wrote and try to see if there is a better way to do it. Either with tools, refactoring, design patterns or whatever the case may be. In my eyes, the alt.net community is about exactly that. Other ways that are outside the scope of Microsoft, may I stress a point here: NOT against what Microsoft says, simply another way of doing things that may or may not align with Microsoft. Just because the alt.net community doesn’t always agree with Microsoft doesn’t make them completely against them. It is a free world after all.

What is your opinion of what the alt.net shared values are?