Test-Drive your Database & the 4 Rules of Simple Design

Apr 27, 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.

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?

Test-Drive Your Database

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.

Express Yourself!

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?

Join I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

Immutable data

May 05, 2016

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!

Do. Or do not. There is no try: Be a speaker at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

Nov 11, 2015

Simon Brown, Keynote speaker I T.A.K.E Unconference 2015

We are proud to announce that in May, 2016, in Bucharest, we will host the 4^th I T.A.K.E Unconference, bringing together 300 top-notch programmers, software craftsmen, architects, DevOps, technical managers, team leaders, startup CEOs, CTOs, technical consultants, and business analysts from more than 10 European countries.

James Shore is our first confirmed keynote speaker for this edition.

Each year, we strive to raise the standards for our participants. We are looking forward to offer them practical, hands-on sessions like workshops, smart talks, and best quality presentations. Side events, like Kata Lounge or programming contest, and networking opportunities will be included in the schedule, so get ready for one of a kind event!

As always, an invaluable role will have our speakers. Each of them brings personal experience and amazing insights, making the unconference the best place for finding inspiration and ideas for your work.

At this moment, we have just launched our call for speakers and we are looking forward to receive your submission!

If you want to make an outstanding contribution at one of the regional most vibrant events, get your proposal ready and submit it here.

We value practical, hands-on sessions, strong case studies, and personal experiences, delivered in an attractive manner. Our event is technology agnostic, so us, and the participants, expect a session that will apply to more technology stacks. No, talking only about Java or C# won’t go the finals!

While you prepare for taking the stage, take a look at what speakers and participants said about their experience:

Last week I had the chance to attend both as a speaker and an attendee my first un-conference (…). The overall agenda and the way the event is structured is very intelligent and it makes people communicate more and exchange ideas in various ways. (Patroklos Papapetrou, Speaker 2015, full blog post here)

The speakers proved to have deep understanding of the topics, and the information was clearly presented in easy-to-read slides. Nice job! (Adriana, participant 2015)

Open Space – very interesting. It’s like a round table. Everyone has the chance to say what he/she wants. Short sessions (as these: 35’, 40’) – OK. (Participant, 2015)

You can find all the details about the call here, and make sure to submit your ideas here by December 22^nd.