Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Object Oriented Design

Mar 11, 2015 by Alexandru Bolboaca in  Women In Tech

pablo rebecca

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. 

Software craftswomen: Franziska Sauerwein

Mar 08, 2016

In celebration of Women’s Day, this March we salute yesterday & today women’s contribution to the development of the technology and IT fields. Follow #famousITwomen to find interesting stories. They might motivate and encourage you to do something out of the ordinary in your career. 

We’ve sat down with Franziska Sauwerwein, software craftswoman. Learn more about her professional journey and lessons learned in the IT field. She will speak at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016.

#1. What’s your professional story?

Please share with us about your journey in the IT field.

Hey, my name is Franziska Sauerwein and I’m a Software Craftswoman. Puzzles have always amazed me and that’s how I got interested in Computer Science. After completing my degree I worked as a software developer and consultant for three years in Germany. I then moved to London to join Codurance in the summer of 2015.

 

My passions include Test Driven Development, Refactoring, XP techniques and high quality software development. I’m always trying to improve my skills and share knowledge. As an active member of the European Software Craftsmanship community I love to participate in unconferences and organise code retreats, hackathons, coding dojos as well as tech talks. I aim to use my skills and creativity to develop software that is reliable, easy to adapt and doing what it is supposed to do.

 

#2. What would be a lesson you’ve learned so far as practitioners in this field?

I learned that software development is much more about people than about sitting alone at a desk in a room and coding in isolation, which is great! I do enjoy coding at a high quality level but people have always fascinated me.

As developers, we have a profound influence on our society and people’s everyday lives. How we write software and what we write has an impact and with great power comes great responsibility. And how people act when developing software has a great influence on how that software turns out. For example, a team that does not have a good team culture or a lacking relationship with the business will most probably have code quality problems that stem from misunderstandings and lack of communication. And sometimes products are developed just from a developer’s perspective without the user’s needs in mind when the teams are too homogenous. This is something that should definitely be changed.

 

#3. Whom do you admire as a women IT practitioner? Why?

Please share with our audience about great women you think they make a difference in this domain.

There are so many women in IT that I admire. If I had to choose one, I’d point out Rachel Davies, an expert practitioner and coach of eXtreme Programming. If you search online for “Rachel Davies xp” (without quotes) you’ll find a lot of content, including videos of her inspiring talks. Talking to her has given me lots of insights and she keeps on inspiring me.

 

What women in IT inspire you? Let us know in a comment!
Curious to meet Franziska? Join her @ I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

The Pioneer of OOP: Barbara Liskov

Mar 10, 2015

The week to celebrate women in IT continues with Barbara Liskov’s story. Let’s bring upfront the stories of #famousITwomen who’ve made breakthrough contributions along the history. 

At the dawn of the software revolution, engineers were struggling. It wasn’t clear at that time how to organize code so that it was optimal, easy to understand and easy to change.

The solution proved to be finding the right abstractions. Barbara Liskov was an active participant in the conversation, publishing papers, implementing programming languages, database systems and operating systems. In one of these conversations, she came up with what is now known as the “Liskov Substitution Principle”, one of the 5 key principles of software design (the L from SOLID principles).

In 2004, Barbara Liskov won the highest award for computer science, the John von Neumann Medal for “fundamental contributions to programming languages, programming methodology, and distributed systems”. She also received the 2008 Turing Award for her work in the design of programming languages and software methodology that led to the development of object-oriented programming.

Watch the story of Object Oriented Programming in her keynote “The Power of Abstraction”, published by our partners from InfoQ.

Hope Barbara Liskov’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. 

Software craftswomen: Alexandra Marin

Mar 24, 2016

In celebration of Women’s Day, this March we salute yesterday & today women’s contribution to the development of the technology and IT fields. Follow #famousITwomen to find interesting stories. They might motivate and encourage you to do something out of the ordinary in your career. 

The importance of women in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) has been gaining a momentum in the last years. At I T.A.K.E. Unconference, we value women’s contribution in IT and we believe their dedication to the software craft can be an inspiration for other practitioners.

Alexandra Marin, software craftswoman speaking at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016, shared more with us about her professional journey and lessons learnt in the IT field.

If you want to find more inspirational stories, we invite you to read also about Franziska Sauerwein, software craftswoman speaking at I T.A.K.E Unconference, and Grace Hopper, programming pioneer. Screen Shot 2016-03-23 at 6.52.20 PM

 

#1. What’s your professional story?

Why did you choose to develop a career in this domain?

Dopamine junkie who loves cracking puzzles. Had my first computer in middle school and by high school had taught myself how to code. One CS degree and a few freelancing/volunteering gigs later landed my first real developer job in Germany. My traditional office career was short lived though. I decided to check for myself if freelancers really go hungry looking for work, as I had repeatedly been warned.

Turns out I enjoy taking responsibility for my own career and remote work came with unexpected benefits. Working with people and causes I truly find compelling, making and sticking to my own work schedule (amazing for dev productivity if done right) and coming into teams as an equal partner are all pretty great side effects.

 

#2. Share with us a lesson you’ve learned since you’ve been working in IT

Maybe counterintuitive, but time and again I’ve seen collaboration putting you ahead of the game. So, experience pair programming & code retreats, make open source contributions, be a speaker, offer mentorship or get a mentor. Building a network beats whiteboard practice any day of the week as far as job hunting goes.

 

#3. Whom do you admire as a women IT practitioner? Why?

I appreciate makers like Simone Giertz and Sara Chipps, creator of Jewelbots, for tackling hardware and robotics. I empathize with Julie-Ann Horvath, ex-GitHub, for a situation all too common for women in tech. Also worth following on Twitter: Iris Classon, Pinterest’s Tracy Chou, and not women per-se, but the @CallbackWomen & @PowerToFly initiatives.

 

Curious to meet Alexandra? Join her @ I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

2 Comments

Rebecca

Actually, my very first job at Tektronix was as a tester for graphics libraries. By the time we were doing Smalltalk, I was a principal engineer and then later become the manager of the group that commercialized Smalltalk. But testing has always been part of my life. In fact, one good way to test Smalltalk code was to try to extend it… as the libraries were designed to be extended as well as used.

Alexandru Bolboaca

Hi Rebecca! Thanks for the clarification. We updated the article based on your comment.

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