16 years of legacy code with mob programming and Lego | Joe Wright

Feb 13, 2017 by Madalina Botez in  Announcements
Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining  I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field. 

 

Joe Wright, Senior Developer, Coach & Architect, helps people deliver software that’s well designed, fully tested and released early. You will learn from his case study at #itakeunconf about how a team can go from individuals to a mob.

 

speaker-badge-professional-status-joe-wright

 

#1. Share with us 5 things from your experience that helped you grow & become the professional you are today

 

# Make time for deep work
Set a few hour blocks aside each week that you will dedicate to improving yourself or creating something each week. As a parent, I’ve had to start doing this by getting up early to grab two hours each day. During this time you can learn a skill, practice coding, write a book or make a podcast. It’s far too easy to let distractions rule your life. Make time to do something you are proud of.

 

# Become a facilitator
I think everyone is terrified of public speaking. It’s an unnatural thing to do. Our ancestors learned this behavior as a survival instinct – if lots of carnivores are looking at you then you are probably the dinner. Time to run.
Getting over this is an important step that enables you to have all sorts of life experiences. Speaking at conferences, leading workshops and meeting interesting new people. The way I beat the fear was by volunteering to co-organise a well-attended meetup. Each month I would have to get up in front of a room of my peers and say some boilerplate about welcome and the agenda. But just that act of getting up and speaking was enough to dull the fear over time. I’ve not been made into dinner yet.
As well as building yourself up as a speaker, it helps improve your network of people. People like speaking to the host at an event and it gives you an easy opportunity to learn about those people, then take a mental note when you might want to get into contact with them in the future.

 

# Ask for help
Don’t feel you have to figure everything out yourself or read up online. Reach out and ask people for help.
As you spend more time in your career you meet more people – and one day you’ll have a question you’d love to ask them. It’s even easier now with social media and video conferencing. People will give you 30 minutes of time online or meet you over coffee to give you their advice if they think you’ve got an interesting question to answer.
I always have a list of three things I want advice on. You never know who you are going to meet.

 

# Improve in more than one dimension
At first, newly minted developers want to get projects released and in users hands. During this, you try to get better at creating software that can be changed to meet their needs. Eventually, newer technology comes out, which promises to solve the problem of getting code out quicker and is easier to change.

 

It’s quite easy to fall into the trap of just learning technology stacks. This can be rewarding, but that’s not the only way to improve as a developer and meet people’s needs.
Seek out opportunities to see the world from the other functions in software. If you tester goes on holiday then volunteer to stand in for them. If you have an ops team then ask to pair on making the release process smoother. Facilitate a retrospective for another team. Run a usability session with real world users to see how your product is used. Stepping into another roles shoes helps build empathy, which will allow you to work better with others people in the future.
If you tech stack isn’t challenging you then concentrate on improving your “soft skills”. Teach someone how it works. Figure out ways to promote and resolve conflict on your team. Fix the root causes of communication and process issues that slow you down.

 

# Find people that will challenge you
It can be hard to get feedback about how you are doing. Are your ideas valid? Often you can’t get this feedback in your workplace. Seek out a group of people or a person that is willing to challenge how you think.
For me, this is the Lean Agile space and my local code craftsmanship group.
Consider these people that challenge you your core group. The way you work should be consistent with the ideals of that group. So don’t ever worry about saying what you think at work, just make sure you stay true to the principles of your core group.

 

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?

  • How can I reduce communication, approval, and tech debt issues from slowing down my team?
  • How can I measure and improve how a dev team spends their time?
  • How can I get started doing this at my work?

 

#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you

  •  Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport (book)
  •  Facilitation advice – available here
  • The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (book)

 

 

 

ITAKE_2017

 

Want to join Joe, +30 international speakers and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?

Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!

Meet the speakers – Part 2. Super early bird tickets available!

Mar 03, 2016

Software craftsmen from more than 15 countries will meet in the heart of Bucharest, 19-20 May, at I T.A.K.E Unconference! For 2 days, almost 30 speakers will share insights, latest trends, and deliver hands-on sessions.

We have previously shared the first round of practitioners who will make this year event a one not to be missed. Below, you can read more about the next 5:

 

franzi_sauerwein_original

Franziska Sauerwein, Software Craftswoman at Codurance LTD, UK

Introduction to Outside In Test Driven Development (London School) (Live coding)

Learn about different styles of TDD and how to choose the appropriate one

Raising The Bar (Talk)

My Journey Towards Software Craftsmanship

 

 

profilbild-halb_original Philipp Krenn, Tamer of technology at ecosio, Austria

Automate all the things AWS with Ansible (Workshop)

You want to automate your AWS infrastructure, the provisioning of instances, and your deployments? Then Ansible is the right tool for you and this workshop gets you up and running in no time

 

 

4039968_original Tugberk Ugurlu, Software Developer at Redgate Software, UK

How Docker Changes the Way You Work with and Release Your Microservices (Talk)

1000 feet overview of managing a solution architecture that consists of Microservices with Docker

Zero Downtime Deployment Golden Rules (Talk)

Getting Into the Zero Downtime Deployment World

 

speaking-blackandwhite-big_original-270x270

 

Tim Perry, Tech lead and Open-Source Champion at Softwire, Spain

Microservice Pipeline Architecture (Talk)

Microservice architecture in practice, to build content pipelines

 

 

 

83476f217fc04fc4773b830842d9e6c2_original

Andrey Adamovich, Software Architect at Aestas IT, Latvia

Patterns for infrastructure as-a-code (Talk)

Patterns are everywhere

Visualizing codebases (Talk) 

 

 

 

Want to challenge the current programming practices as these software craftsmen are doing? Want to experience new techniques, debate on the existing ones or even pair program in the I T.A.K.E Unconference space?

Get your  Super Early Bird ticket today! 

 

Stay tuned. We will continue publishing more about the program, speakers and the dynamic learning practices awaiting you.

Thrilled to see you in May!

In-Process or Inter-Processes Communication at Deploy Time

Mar 03, 2017

Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining  I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.

Florin Coroș, Co-Founder and Partner iQuarc, is a passionate software architect and developer who has been working for more than 10 years in a wide variety of business applications using Microsoft technologies. At #itakeunconf, Florin is sharing more about In-Process or Inter-Processes Communication at Deploy Time.

 

speaker-badge-professional-status-florin-coros

 

 

#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today

 

There might be a fortunate series of events, which fit nicely with my personality and abilities.

One of the things that helped me a great deal, was the fact that I changed the contexts and projects often. Even if I worked for the same company and the same technologies for about 10 years, I have changed the projects, the clients and my role at least once in two years. It wasn’t something that I had planned, but I always wanted to learn and experience new things.

Change is always challenging and creates opportunity for learning and for professional growth.

Another important thing for me, I think it was the fact that I always look for professional models. First, I discovered Uncle Bob, then there were Martin Fowler, J.B. Rainsberger, Roy Osherove, Kent Beck, Juval Lowe, Jurgen Appelo, Richard Campbel, and many others (I remember having a slide with some of these guy’s pictures in one of my first talks I’ve given at a conference ☺ ). Reading their books and articles, and then trying to apply their ideas in my day to day work, inspired and helped me.

Attending to training and conferences is another important thing. The TDD workshop with J.B. Rainsberger, which I attended back in 2010 was a few years jump ahead in my career. After, there were many other high-quality training I had the opportunity to attend, like the IDesign Master Class with Richard Campbel, a workshop with Dan North, or a Requirements course with Kay and Tom Gilb.

Coding just to practice is another thing that makes a difference. I learned this at the Code Retreats and I’ve kept this good habit. From time to time I take a few hours and I just write code with the purpose of learning or practicing. It always pays back.

 

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?

 

In large enterprise applications, there is always the challenge of decomposing the system. From performance considerations we may end up loading all the services in one or two processes, ending up with a monolith, which doesn’t scale and it is costly to maintain. At the other end, we have one process for each service resulting in too many inter-process call hops to handle one user request, which is bad for performance and it may be costly to maintain.

I’ll show a way, which I’ve applied in some projects I’ve architected, on how to separate this communication concern from implementing the business functionality.

#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you

  • My blog of course ☺ onCodeDesign.com . There, it is more about me and my thoughts
  • .NET Rocks (https://www.dotnetrocks.com/) is a podcast I recommend especially to .NET developers, and also to any geeks
  • As a hobby, I recommend learning and playing GO. Even if it a time-consuming game, it is a very good exercise for the mind.

 

ITAKE_2017

Want to meet Florin, +30 international speakers and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?

Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!

Building a multiplayer game server and keeping (most of) your hair

Mar 24, 2017
Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining  I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.

 

Opher Vishnia, Creative Developer at Interlude, is a multidisciplinary creator, invested in many different and often unrelated fields at the same time: computer science, art, music, design, math, game development and more. He is going to share at #itakeunconf more about building a multiplayer game server.

 

 

#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today

√ Invest in personal projects. Think of a project that you think is fun to make and just start hacking at it. Developing something for yourself, where you make all the decisions rather than for a company you work for, is an amazing tool for learning and growing.
√ Join in the conversation. Is there an online group or a meetup for your area of development? That’s a great way to make new personal connections and learn along the way
√ Find an open source project that you like and start contributing. A good place to start would be a tool or library that you already know and use. Your contribution doesn’t have to be code – you can open an issue, improve the documentation or write a tutorial.
√ Take initiative. Is there something in your workplace that can be done better and sounds interesting to play with? Step up and do it. Suggest researching a new topic, or introducing a new tool the workflow. It’ll provide an interesting new challenge and a break from the daily routine. Plus it’ll make you look cool.
√ Stay optimistic. Sometimes these challenges are frustrating, and there are days you won’t make any progress, but the moment you have that “a-ha” moment is worth it all.

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?

Participants will learn about why making synchronized multiplayer games in the browser is so hard and what solutions do we have at our disposal to tackle those.

 

#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you

 
√ Codepen.io is a wonderful tool for inspiration on the web
√ Games in general. Just get Steam and play something!
√  Multiplayer Game Programming: Architecting Networked Game by Josh Glazer & Sanjay Madhav – A very comprehensive book on all things multiplayer

Want to meet Opher, +30 international speakers and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?

Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!

Leave a Reply