Looking forward to meet you at I T.A.K.E. Unconference. If you haven’t done so yet, book your ticket now.
Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Object Oriented Design
The week to celebrate women in IT goes on with the woman who defined the Object Oriented Design – Rebecca Wirfs-Brock. Let’s bring upfront the stories of #famousITwomen who’ve made breakthrough contributions along the history.
Object Oriented Design is about behaviors, not about entities and relations. We owe this idea to a woman: Rebecca Wirfs-Brock.
[Updated based on Rebecca’s feedback]
Early in her career, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock worked as a tester at Tektronix for graphics libraries. In those days, it was customary for testers to write just as much code as programmers in the form of automated tests. She decided to become a programmer because, despite the equally difficult work, testers were paid less than programmers. She became a principal engineer at Tektronix for Smalltalk, the language that inspired Java, Python and many others. This was a great opportunity for the industry, since she introduced the world to “Responsibility Driven Design”, the technique that influenced all modern design techniques such as TDD or BDD. Those of us who used UML owe her the idea of stereotypes. She now lives in Portland, and has been consulting enterprises on architecture and design for the past 30 years.
We were fortunate to have Rebecca a keynote speaker at I T.A.K.E. Unconference. You can watch her keynote below.
Hope Rebecca Wirfs-Brock’s story aroused your curiosity to learn from history more about IT famous women.
This week, stay tuned for the upcoming stories and win an invitation to I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015.
Daniel Billing’s experience as keynote at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017
When learning new things, ideas, skills or exploring new perspectives, the image above reflects how I am feeling when I am trying to assimilate and process all the activities I take part in within the testing community. It’s that beautiful and terrifying moment when you are flying and the sun is ablaze on the horizon. It’s knowing you’ve learned a lot, but there is so much left to learn. Perhaps a move one way or another will lead to failure, but as long as you are quick to learn from those mistakes you can be on a well-lit path again.
Over the last month or so I’ve been attending a few events, including I T.A.K.E. Unconference in Bucharest, Romania, Let’s Test in Stockholm, Sweden and Nordic Testing Days in Tallinn, Estonia. Each of these events offered something new and different for myself as a contributor to those events. However, it is the other aspects of what they provide that are important.
I T.A.K.E. Unconference
I T.A.K.E Unconference was my first time giving a Keynote talk at a conference. This was a huge honor not just to be asked to give a talk, but also the fact that it wasn’t a testing conference. I T.A.K.E. Unconference is a developer conference. Every attendee is highly technical, lives and breathes the code they write and the tools they use. It made me realize that whilst I have spent a lot of time learning about security, there is so much else to learn. Especially about how developers learn and work, and how applications are crafted.
I spent hours talking about how to build good environments for testing using tools like Docker and Heroku, or exploring how developers think about testing. A lot of it is about unit testing, some of it is about automation. But there are a lot of developers who understand the value of good testing and want to work with testers to make it happen. There is a lot we can do better to support them in this endeavor. These are things we should be doing at Medidata…testing cannot happen or exist in a vacuum.
Yes, there were those that think the role of testing or testers is now defunct, where a technical person can achieve all things they need to on a project. It was interesting to be able to discuss and challenge some of that thinking, where a tester can be a specialist or advocate for testing on their project; rather than someone who executes tests, gathers test results and creates endless meaningless reports. I’m not saying reporting is bad, just the doing the wrong reporting is bad, and unhelpful. It doesn’t add value, nor does it explain to those who don’t test what the value of the testing is.
I T.A.K.E. is a hotbed of software craftspeople. People who want to build and develop great software for their customers and clients. The best talk I went to while I was there was one of the other keynotes. Felienne Hermans, of the Netherlands, gave a talk called:
What is science? On craftsmanship for children
This reflected on her approaches to teaching coding to children. Children learn predominately through play, exploring their environment, and asking questions. It’s something that adults have largely forgotten how to do, or if we haven’t has become more formalized. We’ve turned play and learning into work instead. We can make our learning far more creative through events such as hackathons. We should review, model and landscape our applications inside the environment we are working in. Children do this far more naturally than (some) adults.
Read the full article here.
3 easy steps to personalize your Agenda for I T.A.K.E. Unconference
As there are multiple types of activities happening in the same time in different rooms, design your own agenda up-front.
Whether you got your ticket or you are considering to, here’s how you can benefit the most from the 3rd edition of I T.A.K.E. Unconference:
Keynotes and sessions
- Select the sessions from the Schedule.
- (Optional) Check the persona for the selected session (when in doubt).
- Build your own agenda based on the sessions you want to attend.
In the afternoon enjoy the unconference flavor by attending the Open Space.
All-day Activities
Exercise your programming muscle all-day with the Kata Lounge & Product Development tracks, open for you to join whenever you choose.
Watch out for the Programming Contest, where you can win a drone or an iPad, if you compete before 29 May, 2 PM.
Evening Activities
What else is prepared for you? In the evenings, enjoy:
- Code with a Stranger – Have fun, drink a beer, and pair-program with a stranger what you have learnt during the first day or anything you want to practice, scheduled for the 1st evening.
- Networking Party* – Enjoy drinks and food – offered by Mozaic Works – for a chatting fine end of the day, scheduled for the 2nd evening.
