Putting the Science in Computer Science with Felienne Hermans

Nov 26, 2014 by Madalina Botez in Announcements

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.

Immutable data

May 05, 2016

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!

I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017 – Ist day videos & slides

May 22, 2017

The first day of I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017 was a great success: 15 speakers from 9 different countries shared insights and latest trends on 5 different stages.

Live coding sessions, the talks & workshops received an excellent feedback. Also, everyone got involved during the Open Space, Lightning Talks, Product Development Track & Kata Lounge. In the evening, the event continued informally at Dinner & Coding with a stranger.

Videos are available here. Find below the slides from day one. Slides from day 2 are here.

Felienne Hermans – What is science? On craftsmanship for children (Keynote)

Gerard Meszaros – It isn’t testable until it’s tested (Keynote)

Alex Bolboaca – Removing structural duplication

Phillip Krenn – 360° monitoring of your microservices & Se7en deadly deployment sins

Martin Kodok – Powering Interactive Data Analysis with Google BigQuery

Diego Lemos & Vlad Stoian – Extreme Carpaccio: slice thin, code fast!

Thomas Coopman & Michel Grootjans – Playing with projections

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

Vlad “Reign” Zelinschi – Progressive Web Apps – The Future

Alexandra Marin – Mobile design patterns

More slides and videos from day 1 coming soon

Meet the speakers – Part 4. Early Bird tickets available

Mar 21, 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, more than 30 speakers will share insights, latest trends, and deliver hands-on sessions.

In Meet the Speakers Part I, Part II, and Part III, we shared more about the speakers who will make this year event a one not to be missed. Below, you can read more about other top-notch practitioners who joined the speakers line-up:

Nicolas Fränkel, Software Architect at hybris software, Switzerland

Mutation Testing to the rescue of your Tests (Talk)

Come discover mutation testing and make sure your never forget another assert again.

Alexandru Bolboaca, CTO MozaicLabs, Romania

Intro to Microservices (Talk)

Alexandra Marin, Software developer at crossplatform.io, Romania

Error proof your mobile app

C# and NUnit tests are essential, but limited. Let’s make our testing toolkit complete with automated UI acceptance testing for common behaviors like pressing buttons, making swipe gestures, entering text and validating inputs.

Ricardo Mendez, Founder at Numergent, Romania

Flexibility through immutability (Talk)

Is immutable data just functional programming snobbery? How could it possibly provide more flexibility than a mutable approach?

Houssam Fakih, Software Engineer at Arolla, France

Boris Gonnot, Head of Feature Development Teams at BISAM, France

Metrics For Good Developers (Talk)

Simple and efficient metrics for developers

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 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!