CodeBetter and ALT.NET: The Short Version

Mail has been running 5-1 favorable on standing up to certain forces in the community but I did get carried away on my post, and I want to take one last post to put it in bullet items and then let this go for good. I want to thank Ayende for being a good, stick to the facts counterbalance so that I could realize my points were not expressed clearly and were too general.

• I did find some people's reactions suprising however acting as ALT.NET fanboys feeling like I was personally dissing their lastest discovery, since maybe they haven't read the last 2 years of this blog as I worked on a sucessful Agile/XP team and used "ALT.NET" technologies. I have been using these techniques since 1996 when we developed them on Ward's Wiki. My post is about certain individuals who, IMHO, and with the examples I have shown, I believe to be detracting from any good the ALT.NET folks are trying to do
• Certain spokespeople ARE contributing to a unfavorable impression. See here for just one person's reaction. For a one sentence statement of my position, see the comment Karthik  left on Phil's insightful post, "ALT.NET is perceived as being anti-Microsoft because of a few bloggers' overzealous nature in describing their disdain for Microsoft products and all things anti-Agile. " That's what I am reacting to.
• I was "in ALT.NET" years before it was fashionable and cliquey (check the blog)  I don't need to put myself in a clique and away from the mainsteam .NET community in oder to continue being a great developer. I do this stuff all day. I'd rather not put myself in a cliquey group but rejoin the mainstream, stop calling people names, and lead/teach by example
• The post was about why I, as in ME, needed to leave CodeBetter because of individuals I cited taking the site downward in a negative direction with posts that were not about anything but pure vitrol directed at Microsoft for no reason whatsover. I gave the example of Scott's phone rant. Here is another example. Read the comments and judge for yourself. I cite just one example: "When I subscribed to the collective CodeBetter RSS feed some months ago, the posts were actually interesting and useful.  Now it seems like the site has been hijacked by 12 years olds or at least those who are mentally at that level.  Can CodeBetter provide an "idiots free" RSS feed that filters this junk out?" Need I say more? I have every right as a CB member/Community member to call him on this.
• I cited Jeremy's post and I screwed up by attacking Jeremy personally. For that, I am sorry. Jeremy is extremely smart and talented. However, I do disagree on how he categorizes and generalizes Architects. It is very true that there are Ivory Tower Architects but  I am not one and I don't know many others who are personally. I am a Code Driven, Agile Architect when I need to be and I am an Enterprise Architect when I am speaking to a CTO and need to be that.
• My criticism of folks in the Agile community's derogative use of "Enterprisey" is based on what I read, observe and hear. Ayende clarifies that there is a difference between "Enterprise Software" and "Enterprisey" in that "Enterprisey" is a " derogatory term, used to refer to a system whose design or implementation is overly complex compared to its supposed function." If everyone meant that definition, then we are in agreement because as an Agile Architect, I am guided by YAGNI and Do the Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work." However, my experience is that certain Elitists in said community have been known to use the term in a derogatory fashion at anyone either using a non-code backend server platform or producing something that didn't involve a whole lot of code. Trust me, I have heard them and worked with them.
• To that point, Jeremy seemed to be one of those people in his post. As I was trying to point out, if an Architect uses BizTalk to deliver business value is that not just as valuable? Or as James McGovern points out the "lack of secure coding for technology procured by large enterprises, is that strategy or technology?" Solution Architects know how to well, solve business problems by using a wide variety of solutions, not all of them have to be new custom code development.
• I was pointing out the contradiction, that on one hand, the Agilists say its all about sustained conversations with business, business value, etc, they do a turn-around on "Enterprise Architects" who, in Jeremy's words, "puts more focus on business process engineering and IT strategy in general and analysis than technology.  Just to really irk somebody out there, I think an Enterprise Architect is just a fancier title for what used to be called Systems Analysts." Isn't that what it's about? That's what Architects do. They have multiple views of Architecture and use different vocabulary to explain it depending on the audience.
• I stand by what I have said about certain individuals "in the weeds" rather than understanding the overall system view, bigger picture, right level of abstraction, etc. Ayende pushed back on me here, saying it was confidence, and "The problem with the approach that Sam depends is that it is too often so high you never sees any of the details, ending in an enterprisey result. One too complex for the job required, and costing more than it should. I never worked with Sam, so I have no idea about how he actually work, so keep in mind, this is not about Sam." I appreciate that :) and Steve Eichert, among many others, will attest that's not how Sam works (If anything I was way too deep in the weeds the last 2 years coding away) and it isn't how Ayende works but its how a lot of people work and sometimes if people are too focused and aren't as smart as people like Ayende understanding the whole picture, bad results can happen in that the architectural/infrastructure pieces that are truly needed, won't get done and the system will suffer. Then, on the other hand, as Ayende points out, if an Architect is not rooted in code, a bloated bad piece of junk can happen too

I hope this helps, I really do.