BESAC Conference, Asilomar, 5 March 2008
Business Education Statewide Advisory Committee, professional development conference
http://www.calbusinessed.org/

Very little was learned here.

The only attendee from business and industry was from Boeing; he gave the keybote address in which he really stressed the importance of "soft skills" over technical skills.

Some people teach a whole class with CCCConfer.

There exists tools for Game programmers, you can buy bits and pieces and plug them together.

Synchronicity, if you can get it, can greatly enrich an online course.
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SD Expo, Santa Clara, 3 Mar 08
http://www.sdexpo.com/
Keynote address, a panel on "Beautiful Code"

Most code is written once, and read many times, so it better be readable.

Good programming style is like good manners.

The simplest algorithm is often better then the clever one.

Good programmers are minimalists, the less code the better.

If you have a large system of beautiful code, and then you put one small amount of crappy code into, it spoils the whole system. Like putting a spoonful of sewage into a barrel of water.

How to teach people how to write beautiful code? By asking students to read beautiful code.

Does open source encourage beautiful code? It can work both ways because many people reading it makes it beautful, but many people writing it makes it ugly. Successful Open source projects have undergone a darwinian process that forces them to become beautiful.