Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 19-20 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Hugo Messer, founder of Bridge Global, will join I T.A.K.E Unconference as speaker. In his workshop, the participants will learn more about how to successfully manage remote teams.
#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY
- Starting my own software development firm, offering IT outsourcing
- Focusing 10 years on growing the company and learning how to grow a company, manage IT projects and people
- Always reading a lot of (management) books to keep educating myself
- I attend conferences and trainings regularly
- The last years I’ve invested in learning how to share my experience and knowledge with others through speaking and training
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?
During the session they will find out more about:
- common pitfalls within distributed teams > how to make distributed teams work
- communicating across cultures, distance and timezones
- how to apply agile to distributed teamwork
I’ve shared about the session in this video as well.
#3. What else would you like to share with participants
Want to join Hugo and many more software crafters from around Europe?
Programming contest @I T.A.K.E Unconference
As for every I TAKE Unconference edition, we want to give a chance to the software crafters from the audience to showcase their skills and learn more in the process. And because we appreciate passion, we offer a prize to those who convince a jury of well-known international developers that they are the most skilled in the room.
This contest is not meant to be easy. It will require you to practice beforehand, so please read the instructions carefully.
It will also require you to register before the event.
Mechanics
- IMPORTANT: Register to the contest latest one day before I TAKE Unconference by sending an email to steliana.moraru@mozaicworks.com
- On the first day of the event, after lunch, you have max 15′ to do a performing kata in front of the jury.
- The winner will be announced at the end of the second day
Constraints
To simplify the jury’s decision, the performing kata has to conform to the following constraints:
- Only the following programming languages are accepted: Java, C, C++, C#, Python, Visual Basic .NET, PHP, Javascript, Swift or Ruby
- Only solo contestants are accepted. Sorry, no pair programming this time
- The kata has to showcase refactoring skills.
- The kata has to last max. 15′
How we will judge
The jury will judge your refactoring skills.
The ideal kata looks like this – you will get maximum point if you:
- clearly state the smells you see in the code
- pick one of the smells
- clearly state your plan to fix the smell
- fix it in small, safe steps
- run tests after each step to prove you didn’t break anything
- commit after each step with a clear message explaining why you made the change
- fix as many smells as possible within the time constraint
You will loose points if you:
- make big or unsafe changes to the code
- break the behaviour after changing the code
- don’t improve the code a lot
- don’t improve the design by the end of the kata (hint: we judge design using SOLID principles and the four elements of simple design)
Recommendations
To help you, we’ve thought out what we would do if we participated to such a contest. Here’s what we recommend.
1) Use one of the following codebases for the kata:
- https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata
- https://github.com/emilybache/Tennis-Refactoring-Kata
- https://github.com/emilybache/Yatzy-Refactoring-Kata
- https://github.com/emilybache/Parrot-Refactoring-Kata
2) Practice beforehand on the structure we presented for the ideal kata. Ideally find someone to practice with.
3) Watch other people refactoring. YouTube has many videos on the topic, including using the recommended code bases.
Glossary
A programming kata is a repeatable exercise used to practice specific skills.
Performing kata means doing a kata in front of an audience.
Refactoring means changing the internal structure of the code without changing its behaviour.
Putting the Science in Computer Science with Felienne Hermans
Most conversations about best practices in software development focus on personal preferences: Vim versus emacs, static versus dynamic typing, Java versus C#. Other domains use research to settle such questions. Couldn’t software development benefit from science as well?
Felienne Hermans, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, had a very engaging talk at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 about experiments designed and run to answer questions such as:
- What is the best programming language?
- Do design patterns help in any way?
- Is Linus’ law correct?
- Are spreadsheets code?
Watch her talk @ I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 edition to find out the results.
Check out more about I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015 or see directly the Schedule.
Rebecca Wirfs-Brock: Maintaining Your Code Clint Eastwood Style
Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is the object design pioneer who invented the set of design practices known as Responsibility-Driven Design (RDD), the first behavioral approach to object design. She is the lead author of two software design books and design columnist for IEEE Software. By accident, she started the x-Driven Design meme (TDD, DDD, BDD…). Although best known for software design, she is has a passion simply expressing complex requirements and effectively communicating software architecture.
Rebecca shared with the audience how to maintain your code in the keynote address from the first edition of I T.A.K.E Unconference. Watch below her remarks!
Code. Craft. Learn. Share. Repeat. Call for Speakers for I T.A.K.E Unconference, 5th edition, is open! Apply here.