This is quick overview of the sessions that I participated and the key take-aways I take away from this conference.
Day 1
Sander was very inspiring. The world is changing in blazing fast speed and software development ecosystem is trying to catch up with the demands.
My key take-aways:
- Small movable parts in the software is the future (aka microservices, nanoservices).
- Stop doing projects, and start buiding MVPs (minimum viable products).
- Think small, deploy early and frequently.
- Continuous Delivery: Pick backlog item, build it, test it, deploy it,… (Google does it with Gmail).
- Testers: test less and less, build automated tests more and more.
We are bombarded with information and we need to absorb it all… or not? Scott is a charismatic presenter and he gave advice on how to stay focused on your tasks, and be productive while not getting overwhelmed.
My key take-aways:
- Effectiveness is different than efficiency. Effectiveness is doing the right things. Efficiency is doing things right.
- Drop the ball. You don’t have to read everything. Triage your inbox.
- Importance Vs Urgency:
- FOMO = Fear of missing out. Don’t FOMO. If something is important it will come back to you several times.
- Right 3 things that you wish to do each day, week, year. At the end of each day, week, year evaluate if you did it.
- rescuetime.com: Productivity tool to understand where you spend your time.
I personally would recommend to take a look also at:
Estelle presented concerns and pitfalls when building web pages that will be (surely) accessed by mobile devices.
Find her presentation here:
https://estelle.github.io/viewsource/
Jeremy actually presented an overview of the Angular framework and its strong points, inlcuding Typescript, and RxJS (ReactiveX).
You can find his presentation here:
http://codefoster.com/deck/elegant-angular
Stratos and his team is preparing a very promising Error Handling library, and I can’t wait for the Javascript version of it.
You can find the library for Swift and Java here:
Ivan introduced reactive programming and then mainly quick introduced React and Cycle.js.
Freddy introduced the tools SonarLint and SonarQube that perform static analysis on your code and can spot bugs, vulnerabilities, etc. Also presented the general method of how to write a static code analyzer.
Key take-away:
You install SonarLint / SonarQube and you find a long list of potential bugs, and poor quality. What do you do?… Answer: NOTHING!!! It works. If you start refactoring you inject more possibilities for bugs.
Start taking care of the quality of your new code as you write it. You will at some point will have to touch/re-write your existing code. It is at that point that you increase the quality of your existing code. In the long term, the precentage of low quality code will fade to zero.
Sven did a presentation on what are the characteristics of a successfull team, and the team practices they use at Atlassian.
It’s all summed up here:
Atlassian’s Team Playbook
Day 2
Scott presented in his own unique way how the browser and Javascript are becoming the new platform that everything probably will be running on.
Paris explained and demonstrated how to get started with writing Azure functions. The future will be become more and more micro/nano-served.
Chatbots are on the rise and most probably will be the new mobile app. Dimitris and Stavros (the Chatbot ninjas) explained what a Chatbot is, how it is structured and how to approach them.
If you are interested in Chatbots look no further than their activities at Helvia.io.
Javascript is not only for the web. Javascript can help you create your own devices and gadgets. As Tim demonstrated by live-coding an Andruino and a Raspberry Pi 3 device, your imagation is the only limit.
Vasiliki and Alexandros explained to us how AngularJS framework helped to build a commercial app for their organization. Although if you get started today you will go for Angular.
Note: AngularJs = Angular v1, Angular = Angular v2+
Antonio started by explaining what is technical dept, and various success and failure stories dealing with it.
- Technical Debt: he implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
- What causes technical debt:
- Business pressure to deliver.
- Ignorance that we are creating it.
- How to prevent it:
- Code review
- Say “No” when you have to. Don’t deliver poor quality due to pressure.
- How to deal with it
- Explain to business on “money” terms. Impact on customers and brand.
- Make it a story, backlog items, etc.
- Communicate with the team, communicate with the team and communicate with the team.
Closing
It was fun, it was exciting, it was usefull. Unfortunately I wish I could be in two places together to participate in all sessions.
Definately will participate next year.
Captain out…