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.
Thomas Sundberg, developer with more than 25 years of experience, has developed an obsession for technical excellence. This translates to software craftsmanship, clean code, test automation and continuous deployment. At I T.A.K.E Unconference, he will share more about continuous deployment, TDD, and testing.
#1. Share top 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
The five things I am able to come up with now are:
- Automation
- Tidiness
- Teaching
- Speaking at conferences
- Starting my own business
Automation
I have always found it fascinating to automate things.
One of my earliest experiences automating things was with my first PC where I made a boot floppy that booted the system and brought up a word processor. And it only took 1 minute or so. I didn’t really know if this was usable or not, but it was fun.
I wrote code that verified code back in 1997. A colleague of mine asked why. I thought that it was a good idea since I could. It wasn’t formalized like we do today with tools like JUnit, but it was code that verified code.
Automation has also led me to continuous integration back in 2004. This was the time when tools like Cruise Control wandered the earth. Probably hiding from dinosaurs.
Using Cruise Control, Ant and JUnit, I was able to implement continuous delivery at Gamefederation where I worked at the time. I didn’t know it back then, but that is what we call it today.
We had a build that took 20 minutes. It built the system, rebuilt the database, deployed the system and tested that it worked on a freshly setup database.
The testing was so thorough that the operations guy took the artifacts from passing builds and put them straight into production.
When I left Gamefederation, I was told that there had been times when the project manager had been thinking who he should give a task to. Should he give it to the guy leading the developers, we would say lead developer today, or to me. He concluded that if he gave it to the lead developer he would get something back in two hours and a NullPointerException. If he gave the task to me, he would get something back in two days and it would work. One of our differences was that I did unit testing and the lead developer didn’t.
Tidiness
I don’t like a mess. A kitchen sink with lots of unwashed dishes is awful. At the same time, I don’t mind some things being totally out of order. I don’t have to sort the toothpicks at a restaurant. A friend of mine, also into clean code, has told me that he sometimes does this.
The tidiness led me to Clean Code after watching Bob Martin at a keynote at Agile 2008 in Toronto. Hearing him talk about why we prefer clean code over crap was liberating. I bought his book and read it.
Clean code was among my earliest presentations.
Teaching
During an oral exam 1998, before we where even done, I was asked if I could help out as a teaching assistant in a database course. I said yes. This was a start for me where I learned that it is fun and rewarding to teach. Since then I have been working as a teacher and trainer on and off.
Speaking at conferences has enforced this urge to spread knowledge about things I think are important.
Speaking at conferences
Traveling to conferences has been a way to make new connections with people who care about the same things that I care about. That is, clean code, testing stuff, getting code into production and similar things.
I have met new personal friends this way. I have also made business with people I met at conferences.
Starting my own business
I became independent in 2013. This has given me a platform where I can strengthen my possibilities to spread the word about stuff that matters. Not just programming, but also doing it properly.
It took a while before I made the move. It was a scary decision to take. When I started there were a lot of things I was unsure of. Selling and finding assignments, taxes, book keeping just mentioning a few of them.
Running your own company is much more than just writing a few for loops and be done for the day. It is a lifestyle. But it is a lifestyle I enjoy.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your sessions at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?
I have two sessions at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2016.
I will show how it is possible to test all paths through a system without using many integrated tests and that it isn’t possible to test all paths through almost any system using integrated tests.
I will also show that it is possible to test all paths using unit tests.
Using some mocking and stubbing in combination with actual unit tests is the way to do this. If we do this properly, we are able to check all paths through the application and will have very few integrated tests.
Definition of done: Working software in production!
This is a case study where I will share how I implemented CD at one client. CD can mean, at least, two different things.
- Continuous Delivery – the system is delivered for use continuously
- Continuous Deployment – the system is deployed into production continuously
The way we did this was to create packages that were possible to install as the main artifact from our continuous integration build. The target was Red Hat servers so RPM packages where a good artifact.
Delivering these packages to a YUM repo allowed us to install them easily.
The last step was to trigger the installation. We used Puppet for provisioning our servers so all we had to do to automate the deployment after a new package was built was to trigger Puppet.
#3. What else would you like to share with participants
I am an amateur musician
I play the trombone in two orchestras: One show orchestra at Stockholm University- KÃ¥rsdraget and A big band – West Side Big Band. This means that I attend regular rehearsals twice a week and sometimes public gigs at dances or concerts.
Cat lover
I have two cats at home. Sune and Gretchen. They are both cats that we have gotten through an agency that helps homeless cats to new homes.
I write a lot
I have a personal goal to write a blog post each month. I wrote a Maven plugin for helping me with my writing. Most blog posts include source code and copying and posting code is error prone. Including part or complete files that compile is less error prone. This has helped me a lot. It fits quite well with my urge to automate things.
Downhill skiing
I had never seen a pair of skis close until I was over 30. Then I joined a few friends and went skiing for a week in France. The first day was horrible. I fell and hurt myself. But after a week with ski lessons I had understood some of the basics. Skiing is a favorite activity today.
Want to join Thomas and many more software crafters from around Europe?
Call for speakers open
We have opened the call for speakers. For next year we decided to keep the topics that you hold dear: architecture, design principles, TDD etc. and also add some new areas that are becoming more and more popular these days: mobile, big data, scaling architecture etc. Visit the page to learn more.
If you know somebody that has something valuable to share with our audience, we’d appreciate it if you shared the link for the call page.
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Have any questions about the call for papers or the unconference? Let us know in the comments.
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Covariance and contra variance. Say what ?!
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.
Alin Pandichi, Software Developer at MozaicLabs and facilitator of the monthly Coding Dojo meeting that is part of the largerBucharest Agile Sofware Meetup Group, will share during his talk at I T.A.K.E Unconference more about Covariance and contravariance.
#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
I’ll answer this with a little bit of story telling about how I became a software developer. The first two things that helped me were attending the computer science oriented high school and college. There, I learned the basics of computers and programming languages. I also noticed how effortlessly I was solving CS related problems, so maybe I was onto something.
Number three: I got my first job straight out of college, developing a Swing rich client application saving data with JPA. This put me face to face with real world problems. I was faced with the fact that continuous learning is a must in this industry.
Therefore, number four on the list is learning. For the first few couple of years, I kept devouring every Java-related article I could find on DZone. With each one, I found out something new: a useful tool, a Linux terminal command, a development methodology, etc.
Last, but not least, is getting involved with local software development communities. I started attending meetups such as The Bucharest Agile Software Meetup Group and the Bucharest Java User Group. Gradually, I became an active member of both, giving a helping hand in organizing their events. On top of that, I also got involved in the wider community of Global Day of Coderetreat. My talk at I TAKE 2017 is one of the occasional opportunities I get to share what I know.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
They will find it easier to understand the concepts of covariance and contravariance, and how they are applied in the world of programming. In my experience, it was very easy to forget what these two words meant. Not anymore.
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
I dream big, so my biggest source of inspiration is science fiction. My first serious SF encounter was with Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Out of the contemporary authors, I enjoy Neil Gaiman’s work very much.
Whenever I get a chance, I tune into Nick Francis’ podcast called Quiet Music. It is a blend of low beat music of various genres: electronic, jazz, instrumental, folk, light rock, and so on.
Cinema is one of my other hobbies. I am very much interested in following every film festival happening in Bucharest. Also, the Romanian cinema of the past two decades has offered many gems so far, and it continues to do so.
Want to join Alin and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?
Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!
Test-Drive your Database & the 4 Rules of Simple Design
#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY
- 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?
#3. WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE WITH PARTICIPANTS?
Want to join Alastair and many more software crafters from around Europe?