Want to join Karina and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?
Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 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, 19-20 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Nicolas Fränkel, Software Architect with 15 years of experience in a wide range of contexts, University teacher, experienced trainer and book author will join as speaker I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016. In his talk, he will explain how Code Coverage is computed and what its inherent flaw is. Afterwards, he will describe how Mutation Testing works and how it helps pointing out code that is tested but leave out corner cases.
#1. SHARE TOP 3 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY
- I chose to become a programmer, because during my architectural studies, there was a course on POV-Ray, a ray-tracing software where scenes are described with a language
- I now avoid not well-understood bash commands after trying to execute a find with exec rm command on a production server and starting deleting the server’s filesystem
- I value knowledge sharing since I started teaching a very long time ago
#2. WHAT CHALLENGES WILL THE PARTICIPANTS FIND SOLUTIONS TO DURING YOUR SESSIONS @ I T.A.K.E UNCONFERENCE 2016?
During my talk, Mutation testing to the rescue of your tests, I will not provide a solution but challenge attendees beliefs. Code coverage is the most talked about metric when we speak about quality, but its only quality is that it’s easy to compute. In my code, I will show it means nothing, and provide you something more reliable to work with.
#3. WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH PARTICIPANTS?
I’m a Java geek, through and through, but also ski in winter, run, play squash, sketch nudes, write books, and am currently learning Russian and Kotlin.
Want to join Nicolas and many more software crafters from around Europe?
Test-Drive your Database & the 4 Rules of Simple Design
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.
Alastair Smith, developer at Redgate and founder of the Cambridge Software Craftsmanship Community in the UK and a co-organiser of DDD East Anglia, will join this edition of I T.A.K.E Unconference. After attending his sessions, participants will be able to use their programming language to clearly express a program’s purpose and stop writing the programming equivalent of legalese. They will be able to write unit tests for their own SQL code and enjoy database development again.
#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY
The five things that put me on this path were:
- Reading software development books hungrily in the first few years of my career. Texts such as Code Complete and especially The Pragmatic Programmer and Test-Driven Development by Example were hugely influential on my early career and the direction I chose to take. The Pragmatic Programmer in particular is worth re-reading: I didn’t fully understand some parts of it as a fresh graduate joining the industry, and the experience I’ve built up over the last ten years has allowed me to get more from it on each later reading.
- Attending developer meetups, user groups, and conferences. Aside from the knowledge gained from the talks and workshops run at these events, they’re an invaluable opportunity to meet other developers, learn from their experiences, and about the local software industry.
- Finding a good mentor. As it turned out, my mentoring was very unofficial: a former colleague of mine guided me in the ways of professional software development, and pointed me in the direction of books, blogs, and other resources to learn from. His advice was invaluable in helping me discover techniques for writing good tests (and why tests are important), the importance of refactoring, and the foundational principles of Object-Oriented Design, such as SOLID. All of this at the beginning of my career, in an environment where I wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to such topics.
- Understanding people as well as tech. As technical people, we can often be quite blinded to the problems around us and focus on the tools and technologies rather than the underlying collaborations with other people.
- Applying principles I’d learned elsewhere to my profession. I play a lot of music, and have been for over 20 years; as such, the idea of deliberate practice is quite a familiar one to me, and applying this principle to the techniques used in software development made a lot of sense. Participating in and organising things like Dojos and Code Retreats has helped me understand and improve my own development process enormously.
#2. WHAT CHALLENGES WILL THE PARTICIPANTS FIND SOLUTIONS TO DURING YOUR SESSIONS @ I T.A.K.E UNCONFERENCE 2016?
Database changes are difficult to get right, and objects like Stored Procedures and Functions can be particularly hard to work on. We’ll take a tour of test-driven development, and how we can apply it to our database objects to reduce risk in deployment. We’ll also look at how we can set up a CI server to run our new database tests automatically, just as we would for application code.
We’ve all had to read contracts at various points, e.g. when renting a flat, or borrowing money, or the EULAs that ship with software (and who actually reads those, right?). These contracts are generally written in “legalese”, the language of lawyers that is so concerned with being fully precise, and closing loopholes created by interpretation, that documents written in this language become obscure and the meaning obfuscated.
Just as human languages are a communication tool, so are programming languages, and we have our own form of legalese: code that’s far too concerned with implementation details, such as nested for loops, if statements, etc. Refactoring helps us move away from this, but where should we head? If we’re writing new code, how can we best express ourselves in the code we write?
#3. WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH PARTICIPANTS?
Creativity is an important part of my life: I play the bassoon to a high standard and recently started singing. As well as music, I enjoy cooking, and working with chocolate; photography; and losing myself in a good book. William Boyd is a favourite author, and having recently enjoyed The Hunger Games series, I’m continuing my dystopian fiction streak with the Divergent series.
Similar to the Craftsmanship metaphor for software, I like collecting “real-life” examples of software delivery ideas. Ask me about minimum viable cathedrals, or the early Sputnik launches.
I’m super-excited about Star Wars: Rogue One!
Want to join Alastair and many more software crafters from around Europe?
Call for Speakers Opened
Send your proposal to become a speaker at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2019. This year we are interested in specific topics, and choosing one of them might get you closer to becoming a speaker.
To increase your chances to become accepted, here are some tips:
#1. Get into the attendees shoes
If you have a very clear idea of who your audience is going to be, make the exercise to think from their point of view. They choose to attend your session, and they expect the best value from their investment.
#2. Customize, customize, customize
Every audience is unique, so craft your proposal according to what you know about your audience and about the event. Try to bring an original approach for each session you submit.
#3. Pay attention to details
When you apply, make sure you have an excellent title, a clear description of what you want to present and a strong personal bio.
#4. Invest time in your application
Although it might seem at hand, making a proposal takes time. Make sure you follow the guidelines offered by the organizers and when in doubt, ask for more details. Make sure you offer the details requested in the application.
#5. And a little extra thing
You’ve seen the call, you got your information in order and you are pretty sure you want to make a submission.
You can read more in detail about our tips here.
Have any questions about the call for papers or the Unconference? Let us know in the comments.
Combining AI and IoT. New Industrial Revolution in our houses and in the Universe
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.
Karina Popova, Head of Development at Link Mobility, as been working as DevOps Lead last 10 years. At #itakeunconf she will include in her talk a lot of real working IoT use cases and their potential impact of a combination IoT with AI.
#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
The five most important thing for my growth includes:
1. Education, I have spent almost 20 years studying and it was a key point in my professional growth.
2. Travelling, meeting people with different culture and observing their solutions.
3. Reading, especially biographies, as history always repeats.
4. Community contribution, to share and to experience diversity of different skills
5. Attending IT events, to learn the basics of new technologies, keep track of trends and have an awesome deep conversations
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
Attendees will learn what is the potential impact of AI in the IoT sphere, what real IoT use cases with AI on top have been already implemented and how can we increase the quality of life with the AI+IoT.
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
Three most important sources for inspiration before my talk are the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the movie “Bicentennial Man” and my Instagram.
