Empirical Development
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This document provides contact information for Kevlin Henney, including his Twitter handle, Mastodon profile, about.me page, LinkedIn profile, Medium page, and email address. It also includes the dictionary definition of "empirical" as based on observation or experience rather than theory, and a quote from Neil Gaiman about learning by finishing things.
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Program with GUTs
Presented at .NET South West (2024-03-26)
https://www.meetup.com/dotnetsouthwest/events/299766807/
One of the greatest shifts in modern programming practices has been how programmers across many different domains, languages and environments have embraced unit testing. Good unit testing, however, is more than waving NUnit at your C# source. Tests help to make long-term product development cost effective rather than a cost centre, they underpin the effective flow of CI/CD and reduce failure demand on a team.
But the discussion of unit testing goes further than simply writing tests: what makes a good unit test? It is not enough to have tests; poor quality tests can hold back development just as good tests can streamline it. This session provides a perspective on what good unit tests (GUTs) can look like with a couple of examples.
The Case for Technical Excellence
Presented at Agile meets Architecture (2023-10-05)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLEXAdO3X1o
One of the (most overlooked) principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is that "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility". All too often, work that focuses on addressing technical issues is deprioritised in the name of focusing on business value.
Is there a case for technical excellence — in code, in architecture, in people — beyond its appearance on a might-as-well-be-hidden page on a manifesto that's over two decades old? Is technical excellence only the concern of technical roles? Is a good architecture in conflict with business value or a vehicle for it?
This session looks to go beyond buzzwords to build a case for technical excellence that appeals to all roles in a development organisation, noting that "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams".
Lambda? You Keep Using that Letter
Presented online for C++ on Sea (2020-07-17)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bai1DTcCHVE
Lambdas. All the cool kid languages have them. But does lambda mean what C++ and other languages, from Java to Python, mean by lambda? Where did lambdas come from? What were they originally for? What is their relationship to data abstraction?
In this session we will into the history, the syntax, the uses and abuses of lambdas and the way in which lambda constructs in C++ and other languages do (or do not) match the original construct introduced in lambda calculus.
Lambda? You Keep Using that Letter
Presented online for javaBin (2020-04-14)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orcSUE0Jjdc
Lambdas. All the cool kid languages have them. But does ‘lambda’ mean what Java, JavaScript, etc. mean by ‘lambda’? Where did lambdas come from? What were they originally for? What is their relationship to data abstraction?
In this session we will look into the history, the syntax and the uses of lambdas and the way in which lambda constructs in Java and other languages do (or do not) match the original construct introduced in lambda calculus.
Solid Deconstruction
Presented at DevSum (2018-05-31)
The SOLID principles are often presented as being core to good code design practice. Each of S, O, L, I and D do not, however, necessarily mean what programmers expect they mean or are taught. By understanding this range of beliefs we can learn more about practices for objects, components and interfaces than just S, O, L, I and D.
This talk reviews the SOLID principles and reveals contradictions and different interpretations. It is through paradoxes and surprises we often gain insights. We will leave SOLID somewhat more fluid, but having learnt from them more than expected.
Get Kata
Presented at Foo Café (2019-03-21)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLSKLLxrZyY
Programmers use coding katas to kick the tyres of their programming languages, paradigms and practices. Typically anchored in a TDD cycle, katas are simple problems that give programmers the opportunity to exercise deliberate practice and explore different approaches, whether programming style, pair programming or test-first programming.
But the simplicity can be deceptive, with many programmers tiring of these katas too soon, missing out on some of the more mind-bending and paradigm-expanding opportunities on offer.
This session will pick on a couple of katas and dig deeper into TDD, lambdas, language(s), (dys)functional programming and Alcubierre drive. It will present code in a variety of languages, highlight the weaknesses of some common mantras, play around with ideas — and blend code, humour and general nerdiness to be both an enjoyable and educational session.
Procedural Programming: It’s Back? It Never Went Away
Presented at ACCU Conference 2018 (2018-04-12)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrY6xrWp3Gs
When programmers describe code as 'procedural', it’s generally not meant as a compliment. There is a belief that we have collectively moved pass such thinking and onto better paradigms. But a paradigm is no more than a pattern language, a family of solutions fit for a context. Change the kind of problem you are solving and you may find a different solution makes sense — even, in these days where pure functions battle it out with classy objects, procedural programming.
This talk takes a look at some of the past, present and future of procedural programming, looking at how there’s more to it than many first assume, how it has informed and continues to influence language design and how it relates to other paradigms, such as functional and OO.
Structure and Interpretation of Test Cases
Presented at ACCU Cambridge (2018-10-23)
Throw a line of code into many codebases and it's sure to hit one or more testing frameworks. There's no shortage of frameworks for testing, each with their particular spin and set of conventions, but that glut is not always matched by a clear vision of how to structure and use tests — a framework is a vehicle, but you still need to know how to drive. The computer science classic, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, points out that "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute". The same is true of test code.
This talk takes a deep dive into unit testing, looking at examples and counterexamples across a number of languages and frameworks, from naming to nesting, exploring the benefits of data-driven testing, the trade-offs between example-based and property-based testing, how to get the most out of the common given–when–then refrain and knowing how far to follow it.
Recommended
Program with GUTs
Presented at .NET South West (2024-03-26)
https://www.meetup.com/dotnetsouthwest/events/299766807/
One of the greatest shifts in modern programming practices has been how programmers across many different domains, languages and environments have embraced unit testing. Good unit testing, however, is more than waving NUnit at your C# source. Tests help to make long-term product development cost effective rather than a cost centre, they underpin the effective flow of CI/CD and reduce failure demand on a team.
But the discussion of unit testing goes further than simply writing tests: what makes a good unit test? It is not enough to have tests; poor quality tests can hold back development just as good tests can streamline it. This session provides a perspective on what good unit tests (GUTs) can look like with a couple of examples.
The Case for Technical Excellence
Presented at Agile meets Architecture (2023-10-05)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLEXAdO3X1o
One of the (most overlooked) principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is that "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility". All too often, work that focuses on addressing technical issues is deprioritised in the name of focusing on business value.
Is there a case for technical excellence — in code, in architecture, in people — beyond its appearance on a might-as-well-be-hidden page on a manifesto that's over two decades old? Is technical excellence only the concern of technical roles? Is a good architecture in conflict with business value or a vehicle for it?
This session looks to go beyond buzzwords to build a case for technical excellence that appeals to all roles in a development organisation, noting that "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams".
Lambda? You Keep Using that Letter
Presented online for C++ on Sea (2020-07-17)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bai1DTcCHVE
Lambdas. All the cool kid languages have them. But does lambda mean what C++ and other languages, from Java to Python, mean by lambda? Where did lambdas come from? What were they originally for? What is their relationship to data abstraction?
In this session we will into the history, the syntax, the uses and abuses of lambdas and the way in which lambda constructs in C++ and other languages do (or do not) match the original construct introduced in lambda calculus.
Lambda? You Keep Using that Letter
Presented online for javaBin (2020-04-14)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orcSUE0Jjdc
Lambdas. All the cool kid languages have them. But does ‘lambda’ mean what Java, JavaScript, etc. mean by ‘lambda’? Where did lambdas come from? What were they originally for? What is their relationship to data abstraction?
In this session we will look into the history, the syntax and the uses of lambdas and the way in which lambda constructs in Java and other languages do (or do not) match the original construct introduced in lambda calculus.
Solid Deconstruction
Presented at DevSum (2018-05-31)
The SOLID principles are often presented as being core to good code design practice. Each of S, O, L, I and D do not, however, necessarily mean what programmers expect they mean or are taught. By understanding this range of beliefs we can learn more about practices for objects, components and interfaces than just S, O, L, I and D.
This talk reviews the SOLID principles and reveals contradictions and different interpretations. It is through paradoxes and surprises we often gain insights. We will leave SOLID somewhat more fluid, but having learnt from them more than expected.
Get Kata
Presented at Foo Café (2019-03-21)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLSKLLxrZyY
Programmers use coding katas to kick the tyres of their programming languages, paradigms and practices. Typically anchored in a TDD cycle, katas are simple problems that give programmers the opportunity to exercise deliberate practice and explore different approaches, whether programming style, pair programming or test-first programming.
But the simplicity can be deceptive, with many programmers tiring of these katas too soon, missing out on some of the more mind-bending and paradigm-expanding opportunities on offer.
This session will pick on a couple of katas and dig deeper into TDD, lambdas, language(s), (dys)functional programming and Alcubierre drive. It will present code in a variety of languages, highlight the weaknesses of some common mantras, play around with ideas — and blend code, humour and general nerdiness to be both an enjoyable and educational session.
Procedural Programming: It’s Back? It Never Went Away
Presented at ACCU Conference 2018 (2018-04-12)
Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrY6xrWp3Gs
When programmers describe code as 'procedural', it’s generally not meant as a compliment. There is a belief that we have collectively moved pass such thinking and onto better paradigms. But a paradigm is no more than a pattern language, a family of solutions fit for a context. Change the kind of problem you are solving and you may find a different solution makes sense — even, in these days where pure functions battle it out with classy objects, procedural programming.
This talk takes a look at some of the past, present and future of procedural programming, looking at how there’s more to it than many first assume, how it has informed and continues to influence language design and how it relates to other paradigms, such as functional and OO.
Structure and Interpretation of Test Cases
Presented at ACCU Cambridge (2018-10-23)
Throw a line of code into many codebases and it's sure to hit one or more testing frameworks. There's no shortage of frameworks for testing, each with their particular spin and set of conventions, but that glut is not always matched by a clear vision of how to structure and use tests — a framework is a vehicle, but you still need to know how to drive. The computer science classic, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, points out that "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute". The same is true of test code.
This talk takes a deep dive into unit testing, looking at examples and counterexamples across a number of languages and frameworks, from naming to nesting, exploring the benefits of data-driven testing, the trade-offs between example-based and property-based testing, how to get the most out of the common given–when–then refrain and knowing how far to follow it.
Agility ≠ Speed
Keynote present at Agile Tour Vienna (2018-10-06)
Velocity. Sprints. More points, more speed. An obsession with speed often overtakes the core values of agile software development. It’s not just development of software; it’s development of working software. Sprints are not about sprinting; they’re about sustainable pace. Time to market is less important than time in market. Full-stack development is normally a statement about technology, but it also applies to individuals and interactions. The full stack touches both the code and the world outside the code, and with that view comes responsibility and pause for thought. Doing the wrong thing smarter is not smart. The point of a team is its group intelligence not its numbers. Is scaling up the challenge, or is scaling down the real challenge? The distraction and misuse of speed, velocity, point-based systems, time, team size, scale, etc. is not the accelerant of agile development. Agility lies in experimentation, responsiveness and team intelligence.
Refactoring to Immutability
Keynote presented at NewCrafts (2018-06-18)
Video available at https://vimeo.com/276832516
It has been said that immutability changes everything. But what does that mean in practice? What does it mean for existing code that looks more like the mutant apocalypse than an elegant application of mathematical thinking? Immutability can be an ideal that is hard to reach. Refactoring, on the other hand, is all about the art of the possible. In this talk we'll be clarifying motivation and exploring some approaches to help reducing state mutability in code.
Old Is the New New
Keynote presented at GOTO Chicago (2018-04-26)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbgsfeGvg3E
Everything is changing. Everything is new. Frameworks, platforms and trends are displaced on a weekly basis. Skills are churning.
And yet... Beneath this seemingly turbulent flow there is a slow current, strong and steady, changing relatively little over the decades. Concepts with a long history appear in new forms and fads and technologies. Principles are revisited. Ideas once lost to the mainstream are found again.
In this keynote we revisit the present through the past, looking at the enduring principles that shape programming languages, architecture, development practice and development process, the ideas that cycle round, each time becoming perhaps a little better defined, a little more mature, and look to see what else might be on the horizon.
Turning Development Outside-In
Presented at SwanseaCon (2017-09-26)
We default to considering systems from an insider's perspective; the view from outside can be quite different. Can we apply this inversion to more than just requirements?
We may say we want testing, but what do we want from testing? We may say we want logging, but what do we want from logging? We may say we want clean code, but what do we want from clean code? We may say we want an agile process, but what do we want from an agile process? These are harder questions, but their answers can make for better solutions.
Giving Code a Good Name
Presented at .NET South West (2017-07-25)
Code is basically made up of three things: names, spacing and punctuation. With these three tools a programmer needs to communicate intent, and not simply instruct. But if we look at most approaches to naming, they are based on the idea that names are merely labels, so that discussion of identifier naming becomes little more than a discussion of good labelling.
A good name is more than a label; a good name should change the way the reader thinks. A good name should describe structure with intention, as opposed to the affix-heavy approach common to many naming conventions in current use, where the addition of more prefixes and suffixes becomes homeopathic, diluting the meaning. Good naming is part of good design. This session looks at why and what it takes to get a good name.
Clean Coders Hate What Happens To Your Code When You Use These Enterprise Pro...
Presented at code::dive (2016-11-15)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brfqm9k6qzc
It is all to easy to dismiss problematic codebases on some nebulous idea of bad practice or bad programmers. Poor code, however, is rarely arbitrary and random in its structure or formulation. Systems of code, well or poorly structured, emerge from systems of practice, whether effective or ineffective. To improve code quality, it makes more sense to pick apart the specific practices and see their interplay — the cause — than to simply focus on the code itself — the effect. This talk looks at how a handful of coding habits, design practices and assumptions can systematically balloon code and compound its accidental complexity.
Thinking Outside the Synchronisation Quadrant
Presented at code::dive (2016-11-16)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl25p91flLY
Ask programmers what comes to mind when you say concurrency and most are likely to say threads. Ask what comes to mind when you say threads and most are likely to say locks or synchronisation. These assumptions are so deeply held that they define and constrain how programmers are taught and think about concurrency: thread safety is almost synonymous with the avoidance of race conditions and the guarded protection of mutable state. But this is only one quadrant of four possibilities, a quadrant diagram partitioned by mutable–immutable along one axis and shared–unshared along another. Modern C++ supports programmers in all four quadrants, not just the synchronisation quadrant. From immutability to actors, this talk will take a look at patterns and practices that encourage thinking and coding outside the locked box.
Code as Risk
Presented at GOTO Amsterdam (2017-06-13)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhfK-aBo-Y
What is risk? Many people aren't sure, but it's not just uncertainty: risk is exposure to uncertainty.
Instead of just plastering over the cracks, security should also involve reducing the size and number of cracks, reducing the opportunities for cracks to appear, reducing the class of errors and oversights that can open a system to failure instigated from the outside. We can learn a lot from other kinds of software failure, because every failure unrelated to security can be easily reframed as a security-failure opportunity.
This is not a talk about access control models, authentication, encryption standards, firewalls, etc. This is a talk about reducing risk that lives in the code and the assumptions of architecture, reducing the risk in development practices and in the blind spot of development practices.
Software Is Details
Keynote presented at SATURN (2nd May 2017)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3c9hz0bRg
"It's just a detail." Have you ever said that or been told that? Whether it's about implementation or requirements, we often use the word detail to suggest that something is not important enough to worry about. There are so many things to worry about in software development that we need to prioritize—too much detail, not enough focus. The problem is that in software, the details matter because that is what software is: lots of details brought together in combination. If we don't focus on the details, we get debt, defects, and delays.
Game of Sprints
Presented at Agile Bath & Bristol (21st March 2017)
If software development is a co-operative game, as Alistair Cockburn observed, then what kind of game is Scrum? Lots of people are playing it — or say they are — but there seems to be some disagreement about what the point of the game is, how to play it and even, in many cases, what the rules are. This talk looks at Scrum and other agile approaches through the lens of nomic games, hypothesis-driven development and fun.
Good Code
Presented at the European Bioinformatics Institute (17th March 2017)
We often talk about good code — that we would like to write it, that there isn't enough of it, that it should not be considered an optional attribute of a codebase. We often talk about it but, when it comes to being precise, we don't always agree what constitutes good code, nor do we necessarily share a common view on its value.
The Error of Our Ways
Keynote presented at European Testing Conference (9th February 2017)
What happens when things break? What happens when software fails? We regard it as a normal and personal inconvenience when apps crash or servers become unavailable, but what are the implications beyond the individual user? Is software reliability simply a business decision or does it have economic, social and cultural consequences? What are the moral and practical implications for software developers? And when we talk of ‘systems’, are we part of the ‘system’? What about the bugs on our side of the keyboard? In this talk we will explore examples of failures in software and its application, and how they affect us at different scales, from user to society.
Seven Ineffective Coding Habits of Many Programmers
Presented at DevTernity (1st December 2016)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUIUZ09mnwM
Habits help you manage the complexity of code. You apply existing skill and knowledge automatically to the detail while focusing on the bigger picture. But because you acquire habits largely by imitation, and rarely question them, how do you know your habits are effective? Many of the habits that programmers have for naming, formatting, commenting and unit testing do not stand up as rational and practical on closer inspection. This talk examines seven coding habits that are not as effective as programmers believe, and suggests alternatives.
SOLID Deconstruction
Presented at GOTO Nights (20th September 2016)
The SOLID principles are often presented as being core to good code design practice. Each of S, O, L, I and D do not, however, necessarily mean what programmers expect they mean or are taught. By understanding this range of beliefs we can learn more about practices for objects, components and interfaces than just S, O, L, I and D.
This talk reviews the SOLID principles and reveals contradictions and different interpretations. It is through paradoxes and surprises we often gain insights. We will leave SOLID somewhat more fluid, but having learnt from them more than expected.
Declarative Thinking, Declarative Practice
Presented at 8th Light University London (13th May 2016)
Do this, do that. Coding from assembler to shell scripting, from the mainstream languages of the last century to the mainstream languages now, is dominated by an imperative style. From how we teach variables — they vary, right? — to how we talk about databases, we are constantly looking at state as a thing to be changed and programming languages are structured in terms of the mechanics of change — assignment, loops and how code can be threaded (cautiously) with concurrency.
Functional programming, mark-up languages, schemas, persistent data structures and more are all based around a more declarative approach to code, where instead of reasoning in terms of who does what to whom and what the consequences are, relationships and uses are described, and the flow of execution follows from how functions, data and other structures are composed. This talk will look at the differences between imperative and declarative approaches, offering lessons, habits and techniques that are applicable from requirements through to code and tests in mainstream languages.
Object? You Keep Using that Word
Presented at Dynabyte (13th April 2016)
I do not think it means what you think it means. What object means to many programmers is managers, views, controllers, getters and setters, megalithic frameworks, spaghetti inheritance, lots of mocks and large classes. But is this what object-oriented development is really about?
The original vision of objects was focused more on the problem domain than the solution domain. Objects were supposed to be small, properly encapsulated abstractions composed from other objects. Classes were a mechanism for expressing objects, not the editing black hole of the development process.
Think you know objects? This talk strips back the layers of habits, frameworks and legacy to cast objects in a new but old light.
Unequal Equivalence
Unequal Equivalence (Application Development Advisor 9(1), January–February 2005)
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More from Kevlin Henney
Agility ≠ Speed
Keynote present at Agile Tour Vienna (2018-10-06)
Velocity. Sprints. More points, more speed. An obsession with speed often overtakes the core values of agile software development. It’s not just development of software; it’s development of working software. Sprints are not about sprinting; they’re about sustainable pace. Time to market is less important than time in market. Full-stack development is normally a statement about technology, but it also applies to individuals and interactions. The full stack touches both the code and the world outside the code, and with that view comes responsibility and pause for thought. Doing the wrong thing smarter is not smart. The point of a team is its group intelligence not its numbers. Is scaling up the challenge, or is scaling down the real challenge? The distraction and misuse of speed, velocity, point-based systems, time, team size, scale, etc. is not the accelerant of agile development. Agility lies in experimentation, responsiveness and team intelligence.
Refactoring to Immutability
Keynote presented at NewCrafts (2018-06-18)
Video available at https://vimeo.com/276832516
It has been said that immutability changes everything. But what does that mean in practice? What does it mean for existing code that looks more like the mutant apocalypse than an elegant application of mathematical thinking? Immutability can be an ideal that is hard to reach. Refactoring, on the other hand, is all about the art of the possible. In this talk we'll be clarifying motivation and exploring some approaches to help reducing state mutability in code.
Old Is the New New
Keynote presented at GOTO Chicago (2018-04-26)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbgsfeGvg3E
Everything is changing. Everything is new. Frameworks, platforms and trends are displaced on a weekly basis. Skills are churning.
And yet... Beneath this seemingly turbulent flow there is a slow current, strong and steady, changing relatively little over the decades. Concepts with a long history appear in new forms and fads and technologies. Principles are revisited. Ideas once lost to the mainstream are found again.
In this keynote we revisit the present through the past, looking at the enduring principles that shape programming languages, architecture, development practice and development process, the ideas that cycle round, each time becoming perhaps a little better defined, a little more mature, and look to see what else might be on the horizon.
Turning Development Outside-In
Presented at SwanseaCon (2017-09-26)
We default to considering systems from an insider's perspective; the view from outside can be quite different. Can we apply this inversion to more than just requirements?
We may say we want testing, but what do we want from testing? We may say we want logging, but what do we want from logging? We may say we want clean code, but what do we want from clean code? We may say we want an agile process, but what do we want from an agile process? These are harder questions, but their answers can make for better solutions.
Giving Code a Good Name
Presented at .NET South West (2017-07-25)
Code is basically made up of three things: names, spacing and punctuation. With these three tools a programmer needs to communicate intent, and not simply instruct. But if we look at most approaches to naming, they are based on the idea that names are merely labels, so that discussion of identifier naming becomes little more than a discussion of good labelling.
A good name is more than a label; a good name should change the way the reader thinks. A good name should describe structure with intention, as opposed to the affix-heavy approach common to many naming conventions in current use, where the addition of more prefixes and suffixes becomes homeopathic, diluting the meaning. Good naming is part of good design. This session looks at why and what it takes to get a good name.
Clean Coders Hate What Happens To Your Code When You Use These Enterprise Pro...
Presented at code::dive (2016-11-15)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brfqm9k6qzc
It is all to easy to dismiss problematic codebases on some nebulous idea of bad practice or bad programmers. Poor code, however, is rarely arbitrary and random in its structure or formulation. Systems of code, well or poorly structured, emerge from systems of practice, whether effective or ineffective. To improve code quality, it makes more sense to pick apart the specific practices and see their interplay — the cause — than to simply focus on the code itself — the effect. This talk looks at how a handful of coding habits, design practices and assumptions can systematically balloon code and compound its accidental complexity.
Thinking Outside the Synchronisation Quadrant
Presented at code::dive (2016-11-16)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl25p91flLY
Ask programmers what comes to mind when you say concurrency and most are likely to say threads. Ask what comes to mind when you say threads and most are likely to say locks or synchronisation. These assumptions are so deeply held that they define and constrain how programmers are taught and think about concurrency: thread safety is almost synonymous with the avoidance of race conditions and the guarded protection of mutable state. But this is only one quadrant of four possibilities, a quadrant diagram partitioned by mutable–immutable along one axis and shared–unshared along another. Modern C++ supports programmers in all four quadrants, not just the synchronisation quadrant. From immutability to actors, this talk will take a look at patterns and practices that encourage thinking and coding outside the locked box.
Code as Risk
Presented at GOTO Amsterdam (2017-06-13)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyhfK-aBo-Y
What is risk? Many people aren't sure, but it's not just uncertainty: risk is exposure to uncertainty.
Instead of just plastering over the cracks, security should also involve reducing the size and number of cracks, reducing the opportunities for cracks to appear, reducing the class of errors and oversights that can open a system to failure instigated from the outside. We can learn a lot from other kinds of software failure, because every failure unrelated to security can be easily reframed as a security-failure opportunity.
This is not a talk about access control models, authentication, encryption standards, firewalls, etc. This is a talk about reducing risk that lives in the code and the assumptions of architecture, reducing the risk in development practices and in the blind spot of development practices.
Software Is Details
Keynote presented at SATURN (2nd May 2017)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3c9hz0bRg
"It's just a detail." Have you ever said that or been told that? Whether it's about implementation or requirements, we often use the word detail to suggest that something is not important enough to worry about. There are so many things to worry about in software development that we need to prioritize—too much detail, not enough focus. The problem is that in software, the details matter because that is what software is: lots of details brought together in combination. If we don't focus on the details, we get debt, defects, and delays.
Game of Sprints
Presented at Agile Bath & Bristol (21st March 2017)
If software development is a co-operative game, as Alistair Cockburn observed, then what kind of game is Scrum? Lots of people are playing it — or say they are — but there seems to be some disagreement about what the point of the game is, how to play it and even, in many cases, what the rules are. This talk looks at Scrum and other agile approaches through the lens of nomic games, hypothesis-driven development and fun.
Good Code
Presented at the European Bioinformatics Institute (17th March 2017)
We often talk about good code — that we would like to write it, that there isn't enough of it, that it should not be considered an optional attribute of a codebase. We often talk about it but, when it comes to being precise, we don't always agree what constitutes good code, nor do we necessarily share a common view on its value.
The Error of Our Ways
Keynote presented at European Testing Conference (9th February 2017)
What happens when things break? What happens when software fails? We regard it as a normal and personal inconvenience when apps crash or servers become unavailable, but what are the implications beyond the individual user? Is software reliability simply a business decision or does it have economic, social and cultural consequences? What are the moral and practical implications for software developers? And when we talk of ‘systems’, are we part of the ‘system’? What about the bugs on our side of the keyboard? In this talk we will explore examples of failures in software and its application, and how they affect us at different scales, from user to society.
Seven Ineffective Coding Habits of Many Programmers
Presented at DevTernity (1st December 2016)
Video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUIUZ09mnwM
Habits help you manage the complexity of code. You apply existing skill and knowledge automatically to the detail while focusing on the bigger picture. But because you acquire habits largely by imitation, and rarely question them, how do you know your habits are effective? Many of the habits that programmers have for naming, formatting, commenting and unit testing do not stand up as rational and practical on closer inspection. This talk examines seven coding habits that are not as effective as programmers believe, and suggests alternatives.
SOLID Deconstruction
Presented at GOTO Nights (20th September 2016)
The SOLID principles are often presented as being core to good code design practice. Each of S, O, L, I and D do not, however, necessarily mean what programmers expect they mean or are taught. By understanding this range of beliefs we can learn more about practices for objects, components and interfaces than just S, O, L, I and D.
This talk reviews the SOLID principles and reveals contradictions and different interpretations. It is through paradoxes and surprises we often gain insights. We will leave SOLID somewhat more fluid, but having learnt from them more than expected.
Declarative Thinking, Declarative Practice
Presented at 8th Light University London (13th May 2016)
Do this, do that. Coding from assembler to shell scripting, from the mainstream languages of the last century to the mainstream languages now, is dominated by an imperative style. From how we teach variables — they vary, right? — to how we talk about databases, we are constantly looking at state as a thing to be changed and programming languages are structured in terms of the mechanics of change — assignment, loops and how code can be threaded (cautiously) with concurrency.
Functional programming, mark-up languages, schemas, persistent data structures and more are all based around a more declarative approach to code, where instead of reasoning in terms of who does what to whom and what the consequences are, relationships and uses are described, and the flow of execution follows from how functions, data and other structures are composed. This talk will look at the differences between imperative and declarative approaches, offering lessons, habits and techniques that are applicable from requirements through to code and tests in mainstream languages.
Object? You Keep Using that Word
Presented at Dynabyte (13th April 2016)
I do not think it means what you think it means. What object means to many programmers is managers, views, controllers, getters and setters, megalithic frameworks, spaghetti inheritance, lots of mocks and large classes. But is this what object-oriented development is really about?
The original vision of objects was focused more on the problem domain than the solution domain. Objects were supposed to be small, properly encapsulated abstractions composed from other objects. Classes were a mechanism for expressing objects, not the editing black hole of the development process.
Think you know objects? This talk strips back the layers of habits, frameworks and legacy to cast objects in a new but old light.
Unequal Equivalence
Unequal Equivalence (Application Development Advisor 9(1), January–February 2005)
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Seven Ineffective Coding Habits of Many Programmers
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The system's ability to streamline workflows and automate ticket routing significantly reduces the time taken to process each ticket, making the process faster and more efficient. Mobile access allows field technicians to update ticket information on the go, ensuring that the latest information is always available and accelerating the locate process. Overall, Utilocate not only enhances the efficiency and accuracy of locate ticket management but also improves safety by minimizing the risk of utility damage through precise and timely locates.
Globus Compute Introduction - GlobusWorld 2024
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The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) is a global network of data servers that archives and distributes the planet’s largest collection of Earth system model output for thousands of climate and environmental scientists worldwide. Many of these petabyte-scale data archives are located in proximity to large high-performance computing (HPC) or cloud computing resources, but the primary workflow for data users consists of transferring data, and applying computations on a different system. As a part of the ESGF 2.0 US project (funded by the United States Department of Energy Office of Science), we developed pre-defined data workflows, which can be run on-demand, capable of applying many data reduction and data analysis to the large ESGF data archives, transferring only the resultant analysis (ex. visualizations, smaller data files). In this talk, we will showcase a few of these workflows, highlighting how Globus Flows can be used for petabyte-scale climate analysis.
LORRAINE ANDREI_LEQUIGAN_HOW TO USE ZOOM
Zoom is a comprehensive platform designed to connect individuals and teams efficiently. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Zoom has become a go-to solution for virtual communication and collaboration. It offers a range of tools, including virtual meetings, team chat, VoIP phone systems, online whiteboards, and AI companions, to streamline workflows and enhance productivity.
Large Language Models and the End of Programming
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Providing Globus Services to Users of JASMIN for Environmental Data Analysis
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Innovating Inference - Remote Triggering of Large Language Models on HPC Clus...
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A Study of Variable-Role-based Feature Enrichment in Neural Models of Code
Understanding variable roles in code has been found to be helpful by students
in learning programming -- could variable roles help deep neural models in
performing coding tasks? We do an exploratory study.
- These are slides of the talk given at InteNSE'23: The 1st International Workshop on Interpretability and Robustness in Neural Software Engineering, co-located with the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2023, Melbourne Australia
Navigating the Metaverse: A Journey into Virtual Evolution"
Join us for an exploration of the Metaverse's evolution, where innovation meets imagination. Discover new dimensions of virtual events, engage with thought-provoking discussions, and witness the transformative power of digital realms."
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Graspan: A Big Data System for Big Code Analysis
We built a disk-based parallel graph system, Graspan, that uses a novel edge-pair centric computation model to compute dynamic transitive closures on very large program graphs.
We implement context-sensitive pointer/alias and dataflow analyses on Graspan. An evaluation of these analyses on large codebases such as Linux shows that their Graspan implementations scale to millions of lines of code and are much simpler than their original implementations.
These analyses were used to augment the existing checkers; these augmented checkers found 132 new NULL pointer bugs and 1308 unnecessary NULL tests in Linux 4.4.0-rc5, PostgreSQL 8.3.9, and Apache httpd 2.2.18.
- Accepted in ASPLOS ‘17, Xi’an, China.
- Featured in the tutorial, Systemized Program Analyses: A Big Data Perspective on Static Analysis Scalability, ASPLOS ‘17.
- Invited for presentation at SoCal PLS ‘16.
- Invited for poster presentation at PLDI SRC ‘16.
In 2015, I used to write extensions for Joomla, WordPress, phpBB3, etc and I ...
In 2015, I used to write extensions for Joomla, WordPress, phpBB3, etc and I didn't get rich from it but it did have 63K downloads (powered possible tens of thousands of websites).
Enterprise Software Development with No Code Solutions.pptx
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, enterprise software development is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional coding methods are being challenged by innovative no-code solutions, which promise to streamline and democratize the software development process.
This shift is particularly impactful for enterprises, which require robust, scalable, and efficient software to manage their operations. In this article, we will explore the various facets of enterprise software development with no-code solutions, examining their benefits, challenges, and the future potential they hold.
Need for Speed: Removing speed bumps from your Symfony projects ⚡️
No one wants their application to drag like a car stuck in the slow lane! Yet it’s all too common to encounter bumpy, pothole-filled solutions that slow the speed of any application. Symfony apps are not an exception.
In this talk, I will take you for a spin around the performance racetrack. We’ll explore common pitfalls - those hidden potholes on your application that can cause unexpected slowdowns. Learn how to spot these performance bumps early, and more importantly, how to navigate around them to keep your application running at top speed.
We will focus in particular on tuning your engine at the application level, making the right adjustments to ensure that your system responds like a well-oiled, high-performance race car.
Mobile App Development Company In Noida | Drona Infotech
Looking for a reliable mobile app development company in Noida? Look no further than Drona Infotech. We specialize in creating customized apps for your business needs.
Visit Us For : https://www.dronainfotech.com/mobile-application-development/
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Empirical Development
- 3. empirical, adjective based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic Concise Oxford English Dictionary
- 7. You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things. Neil Gaiman