After a big of pleading I got the privilege of being able to attend Jean-Paul Boodhoo’s Nothing But Dot Net Bootcamp!

JP is quite well known in the .Net circuit for his passion for development and his pragmatic approach to software design. Typical posts about his course underline that you’ll be giving up your home life for a week. Since I’m a bachelor, it wasn’t a big deal for me, but I did feel a bit bad for the guys that had wives and kids at home. Our typical day was no shorter than 14 hours, and one lasted 20 hours. This was for a grand total of 80 hours of training in a 5 day span! The crazy part was that the material was flying at you so fast you didn’t even get a chance to be tired.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how inspirational JP can be. Not just as a developer but as a person. Not only did he feed us enough developer fundamentals, he also provided management tips, and inspirational stories and references. He shed a new light on what it means to be a developer. I greatly appreciated these tangents, and it has made me think a bit more about what I am trying to accomplish in this world.

The other great takeaway from the course was the great people that attended it. There was a total of 15 of us from all backgrounds and skill levels. Not only were there great programmers, there were some great personalities too. I’ll be making sure I keep in touch with all the local developers, and plan on a 6 month re-union with them in the future. I have to give a shout out to Ted, and Peter from AndOrNot for keeping things entertaining.

This is getting long enough, and I know that trying to write everything that I experienced in the course is next to impossible. I’ll probably be referencing skills I learned in the course for quite a while.

If you stumbled upon this post because you are thinking of attending his course, I highly recommend that you do! Even if I had to front my own money for the course I would. It’s the best investment you can do for your career.