Daniel Doubrovkine presented a summer program for building technology from the ground up. The program covers topics over several weeks like choosing a code name, source control, code reviews, technology stacks, implementing user stories with tests, continuous integration and deployment, and the importance of people. The goal is for developers to come out knowing how to get started with the codebase, commit code with peer reviews, and have automated testing and deployment processes in place.

1. Daniel Doubrovkine (dB.)
@dblockdotorg
TECH FROM THE GROUND UP
Summer Program – Monday, July 30

2. Take a good idea …

3. … and make working software

4. Day 0
 What will you do?
“Dear ___,
Saw your presentation at ___. I liked the Q&A and learned a bunch of new things.
I have a favor to ask. I’ve joined a NY startup, ___. We’re just starting, and I am
hoping to do things ‘right’ from the start. I was wondering whether I could borrow
someone’s time at ___ next week (yours or someone who works for you) and maybe
bring 1-2 people with me to see how your code and tooling is organized.
Sincerely,
-Me”

5. Day 1
 Pick a Code Name
this is “Gravity”

6. Day 2
 Documents Go Here
Hosted
Free or Cheap
Private
Shareable
Backed Up
 Passwords

7. Day 3
 Tasks Go Here
Create Tasks
Take Tasks
Start Tasks
Complete Tasks

8. Day 4
 A Bit of Process
Extreme
Programming Scrum Waterfall
(XP)
Agile Not Agile
What do we do during the What are all the things we
What do we do next?
next month? need to do this year?
Grow this way  #FAIL

9. Day 5
 Learning
Domain Driven Design
Taxonomy
Specifications
Wireframes
People

10. Week 1
 Scheduled exciting meetings with other startups
 Created a place to store information, a team wiki
 Created a KB and a way to create new knowledge
 Created a place to manage and track work.

11. Week-End
 Sustainable Pace

12. Day 1
 A Plan
Story: Users Can Sign Up

13. Day 1
 Source Control
Repository
Commit
Push
Pull
Merge

14. Day 1
 Code Reviews
Peer review of every check-in
Shared knowledge
Shared responsibility
It’s common to push back
Reviewboard
Crucible

15. Day 1
 Your First Commit
README
GettingStarted.md

16. Day 2
 A Friendly Visit
2-3 People
Bring Pastries
Tell Your Story
Be Impressed
Ask “Why?” 3x
Owe One

17. Day 3: Choosing Technology

18. Stacks

19. A Web Stack
 Backbone.js  Django
 Rails  Python
 Ruby  Apache
 MongoDB  MySQL
 Heroku  Linux
 AWS  Rackspace

20. Stacks
 Help You Focus on The Domain
 Classify Problems
 Offer Generic Solutions
 Provide Consistent Experience
 Map Software Evolution
 Enable Reuse of Skills

21. Big Company: Bakeoff
 Identify Candidates
ASP.NET / RoR / J2EE / LAMP
 Develop Metrics
scalability, complexity, cost
 Gather Data
feature matrix, metrics data
 Compare
=SUM(A:Z)
 Pick a Winner
=MAX(SUM(A:Z))

22. Alternatives: Personal Favorite

23. Alternatives: Trustworthy People
 It worked before
 It didn’t work before
 It’s new and shiny
 Someone I trust uses it

24. Alternatives: Simplicity
 The Emperor’s Old Clothes
Charles Hoare, 1981
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358561&bnc=1

25. Alternatives: Developer Happiness
 Developers Are Happy with
Their Own Choices
Cutting Edge Technology

26. Does it really matter?
 Try It … Iterate … Keep It … Toss It
Easy to Learn
Frustration-less
Quick to Leverage
Vibrant Community Time
Elegant Solutions
Results
Fighting
Learning

27. Day 4
 Implement a Story w/ Tests
 Setup Continuous Integration
“Writing tests makes development faster, not
slower from day one four.”

28. Day 4
 Continuous Deployment
Development
Staging
Production
Demo

29. Day 5
 Demo Day!
Developers know how to get started.
Developers can commit code with a peer code review.
Every time a developer checks in code, continuous integration runs tests and
e-mails results to the team.
Every time continuous integration executed tests successfully, staging gets
the latest code.
We can deploy to production by hitting a button!

30. A Sprint: Week 3 & 4
 User-Facing Stories
 Under-Promise and Over-Deliver
 Make People Happy
 Keep Things Simple
 Don’t Acquire Technical Debt

31. People
 People make all the difference
 Cultural fit is more important than technical abilities
 There’re excellent developers that are a bad cultural fit
 There’re bad developers that are an excellent cultural fit
 Generalists are Often Better than Specialists
 Pigs, not Chickens

32. Your Resume
 Passion to Professionalism
 Examples of Doing
 Consistent Delivery
 Demonstrable Experience
 Strong References

33. You
 Doer
 Humble
 Listens
 Self-Sufficient
 Thorough

34. Questions
name: Daniel Doubrovkine (aka. dB.)
company: http://art.sy
twitter: @dblockdotorg
blog: http://code.dblock.org
email: dblock@dblock.org
slides: http://slideshare.net/dblockdotorg