What is a Curated Guide to ASP.NET MVC?
The Internet is vast, the pace of technological change is incredible, and you probably don’t have time to casually surf the web learning about hot topics like the latest version of MVC. However, curating the available information allows you to torpedo the web. Instead of making you sift through everything out there, curation takes you on a guided tour of the best content available, helps you find what you need quickly, and suggests new finds to share with others.
I love this concept.
For platforms like ASP.NET MVC, we can’t always wait for huge books to be published, so we try to wade through an ocean of online information. The challenge is to know what is worth paying attention to, and what’s not up to scratch.
In many cases, some of the best content available comes from programmers in the trenches, sharing something they just worked out for a project similar to yours. Sometimes the content comes from program managers and celebrity programmers who spend their time dispensing knowledge—creating and distributing guides and documentation so you can make the most of the new technologies.
Even project teams will create documentation based on early versions of a framework in order to get feedback on their ideas and implementations, which is great for the community, but as this documentation sticks around, its relevance can be difficult to know.
All of this creates ample sources of information, but it also creates ample opportunity for confusion. It is hard to stay current, and even harder to piece together an understanding from the fragments, misdirection, and repetitions you find across the web.
When we’re trying to learn and understand a new technology, context is critical. Google will help you find lots of information, but it won’t, and can’t, assess what’s worth reading, what’s wrong, and what’s not relevant anymore. Helping to answer these questions is the pivotal role that curation plays.
As a curator and a guide, I’ve been working with Simple-Talk, trawling the web to bring together some of the best information on ASP.NET MVC, and creating a guide to help developers understand the technology. This curated resource is still being refined and developed, so we would love to hear your feedback and ideas to help us improve the resource.
I must confess that I am not entirely altruistic as a curator; I learn a great deal. I get to read a lot, I get to see many great ideas, and I try out what the authors are talking about. I benefit from this research, and my projects benefit too.
Take a look, and hopefully you’ll benefit from the guided tour we’ve created.