Immutable data

May 05, 2016 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, 19-20 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.

Ricardo J. Mendez, founder at Numergent, is a software developer with 20 years of practice. He will share in his talk at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016 more about immutable data.

#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY

Starting my own business, leaving the comfort of a company where you get a certain sense of security by deriving a regular salary, and having to deal with the hidden iceberg of new skills I had to learn but hadn’t realized I didn’t even know about.

Joining my first start up, which wasn’t the same as a usual job, nor with the degree of control of just running my own business, was a great learning experience on how to deal with uncertainty while still aiming to provide a measure of direction.

Realizing that, as a developer, your job is not to deliver code. Your job is to keep the user happy, and delivering code is only a part of that. It requires a mental shift from the technology-focused mentality one tends to have as an engineer.

Working with distributed teams, and learning to adapt to the different work and communication styles of people from different countries, has made a huge difference in adaptability, and has taught me to not assume the message is always getting across.

Going through several technology trends and epochs, seeing language and platform flame wars rage and abate, trying a bit of everything, helps come to grips with the idea that a language or a platform is just a tool, and it’s what you do with it that matters.

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?

The idea that being unable to modify your data can bring more flexibility is unintuitive.

However, the bigger our codebases grow, the harder it becomes to find out if a refactoring process, or even a seemingly small change, will have a negative impact. Test suites can reduce this uncertainty, but normally only inform us of a problem *after* we’ve made a change. There’s usually no way to know, in advance, how time consuming the side effects of a modification will be.

A shift in mentality towards data immutability, whatever the language we are using, will help structure the code and functionality in a way that makes it easier to grow and change down the road.

#3. What else would you like to share with participants ?

I assemble and lead project-specific teams to tackle challenges involving interaction design, data and open source. I’ve been working on software for over 20 years, across multiple industries – from desktop tools, to banking and financial institutions, to healthcare, to gaming.

I usually work with distributed teams, as I’d rather take the expertise where I find it than expect it to be around the corner, and it leads to interesting, varied teams with different perspectives.

A voracious reader, of both technical and non-technical books, it would be strange to find me without one or two tomes in progress. This extends to platforms and languages – I very much enjoy kicking the tires on both, always looking for something new to learn.

Want to join Ricardo and many more software crafters from around Europe?Join I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

Behaviour Driven Development with Thomas Sundberg

Nov 26, 2014

Thomas Sundberg is an independent consultant based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm. Thomas has been working as a developer for more than 20 years and has developed an obsession for technical excellence. This translates to Software Craftsmanship, Clean Code and Test Automation.

Cucumber JVM is a tool that allows development teams to describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation, automated test and development-aid – all rolled into one format. Cucumber JVM enables the implementation of Behaviour Driven Development in an organization that uses JVM for development.

Enjoy his presentation @ I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 edition.

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

Dec 01, 2016

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.

Show your coding skills while competing with peers like you

May 14, 2015

Do you know how to test systems? Can you point coding issues? Are you open to learning from other people? And, best of all, can you safely clean up existing code and improve its design? These are all core developer skills nowadays, and you’ll greatly benefit from mastering them. Here’s just one more opportunity to do so during I T.A.K.E. Unconference – The Programming Contest. We think you’re going to enjoy it.

Take a set of challenges that will put your skills to the test, overcome them and get the most points to win the contest. Oh, we almost forgot: those getting the most points win gadgets like a drone or an iPad. They are still small rewards compared to the learning, but we’re sure they help :).

How the Programming Contest works?

Well, this is simple. We try to automate the process as much as possible. For the moment the instructions are as simple as:

Register for THE contest on May 28
Solve the challenges
Submit the solutions until May 29, 2 pm

Really cool: you can use ANY of the following programming languages: Java, C#, PHP, C++.

Who will review your code?

The Jury is built of Software Craftsman Fellows from Europe – names soon to be announced. They will grade each challenge you took. There will be just a few challenges, and taking all of them may lead you to the highest score. So the more you solve the closer to win.

Compete with passionate coders at I T.A.K.E. Unconference

Join the crew, compete with developers like you, gain recognition and take the drone home, offered by Mozaic Works. Or the iPad offered by Accenture.

Don’t miss the Programming Contest as well as many other hands-on sessions at I T.A.K.E. Unconference happening in Bucharest on 28-29 May 2015.