Presenting at ESDC in March
Feb
You may ask yourself, what is ESDC? Well, glad you asked… it is the new Enterprise Software Development Conference that is being held in San Mateo just outside of San Francisco, March 1 - 3.
Some of you may remember SD West or Software Development West, this was a who’s-who of software development, which included great speakers, good information, and people excited about learning. Well due to the economy SD West was discontinued in 2009, but ESDC is here to take it’s place and move forward in providing cutting edge education and industry thought leaders in one great location.
So what will I be presenting? On Wednesday March 3rd, from 11:30 to 12:45 I will be presenting on "Five Static Code Audits Every Developer Should Know - and Use." As many of you know who read my blog, I think that both Audits and Metrics are vastly underused in our profession and I’m excited about showing developers that it is worth their time to learn, implement, and broadcast the results of good software design. One of the main focuses with this demonstration/workshop… (I know it is only an hour, but I hope everybody leaves with information they can put to work immediately when they get back to work) is how audits fit into the Agile approach.
Of course I know that I’m a value, (joke) however there are a ton of other great speakers at the conference including our own David I who will be presenting on "Software + Database Archeology (Part 1 & 2)" on Tuesday March 2nd, from 1:30 to 4:45 pm. Plus, some of these that I will be attending:
108 - The Productive Programmer
Neal Ford
The Productive Programmer consists of two parts: mechanics and practice. In the mechanics section, we’ll focus on four principles of productivity: acceleration, focus, automation and canonically. This session defines the principles and describes their use, but the primary focus of this class is to present real-world examples of how you can use these principles to make yourself a more productive programmer. The second part of this session teaches you 10 ways to improve your code, derived from the practices section. This class includes tons of examples, all culled from real-world projects.
202 - How to Suck a Little Less at Software Project Management
Larry O’Brien
Do you need to fine-tune your Kanban board to accurately reflect the unexpected absence of one of your pair programmers while maintaining your current six-week delivery iteration? If so, this is not the class for you. Are you, instead, dealing with a project that feels like it’s stuck in the mud, with delays cropping up constantly, taking one step forward and one step back, relying on the effort of superstar programmers and mandatory overtime? If so, you’ve got more company than you might think.
In this fast-paced talk, SD Times columnist Larry O’Brien will talk about increasing productivity and quality in a world of lowest-bid offshore contractors, over-hyped technology and, horror of horrors, clients who "did a little programming in college." What matters? Rapidly delivering value, establishing trust and developing for evolution. The lecture will be structured as a series of lightning talks on team and individual productivity, iterative development and delivery, coordinating a distributed development team, and the critical Agile techniques of unit testing and continuous integration.
304 - Principles of Test Driven Development
Robert C. Martin
Testing is not a verification technique. Testing is a design, documentation and specification technique that incidentally verifies that the software works as intended. This class discusses and demonstrates the disciplines and techniques of Test-Driven Development (TDD). Demonstrations are in Java using the JUnit and FITNESSE frameworks for Unit testing and Acceptance testing, respectively.
705 - Agile Modeling: No, It’s Not an Oxymoron
Terry Quatrani
So you have adopted an Agile process and think you don’t need to model. You should think again. One of the key principles of Agile development is communication. One of the best ways to facilitate communication is by using a model. Even though Agile modeling is different than traditional modeling, you will still be modeling. Requirements are needed in order to build the right system. Architecture is key; no one just sits down and writes code. Testing is imperative; "Test early, test often" is a mantra often heard. Come to this class to learn how modeling and, yes, even UML can be used effectively in an Agile development process.
802 - Comparing the Cloud: Google App Engine vs. Amazon’s EC2
Andrew Glover
Several years ago, a few smart companies took advantage of the commoditization of hardware (and related software) by building systems made up of a lot of cheap machines, knowing that the entire infrastructure would continue to work even if individual machines broke at some point. Those smart companies-like Google and Amazon (to name a few)-have enormous infrastructures that they can literally rent out to people like you and me (and keep their core business running smoothly at the same time).
This class will teach you about Google’s and Amazon’s Cloud infrastructures, and the two are quite different. Google’s App Engine is more of a platform for developing Java Web applications. Amazon’s EC2 offering is less of a development platform per se and more of a generic infrastructure service that hosts virtual machines (which can be Linux- or Windows-based) on which you can run anything you’d like.
Open-source solutions combined with borrowed infrastructures are changing the character of Java development, letting teams deliver better software quickly and at a low cost. Come to this class to learn how it works, and how to get started.
Just don’t take my limited ones; here is a link to the conference catalog: http://www.go-esdc.com/pdf_files/ESDCcat.pdf
I know the economy is tough and I know budgets are tight, but if you are a software professional and you want to raise your development game, I think this is an excellent value for you and your company. Remember, when asking the boss to attend a conference like this, you have to make a few promises and then follow-through if the company is paying for you to attend:
- Summary email at the end of each day to the boss and team
- This should include things learned and things that could be implemented in your organization and how it could help
- Any summary information or links as value add
- You have to have at least a 1 hour review of the conference when you return with your boss and the team. I recommend using the summary emails as a great starting point for this review.
- Finally, try to put something you learned to use as soon as you get back and show the boss the results. This includes even bad results, at least now you know that ‘x’ sounds good but may not work for you or your company.
So if you can make it to San Mateo on March 1 - 3rd, I would recommend hanging out with us. To register go here: http://www.go-esdc.com/register.html Early bird rates end 2/12/2010.
I hope to see you there, and yes I will be showing Delphi… plus, C++ and Java.
