This document outlines how to be a rock star developer by drawing analogies to rock stars and musicians. It discusses rocking interviews by making cool demos and solving FizzBuzz in multiple programming languages. To rock the job, the document suggests crafting your own tools like frameworks and databases, and putting skills together through projects like a programming language and data journalism platform called The Gamma. The overall message is that developers can achieve rock star status by learning instruments like guitar, and developing skills as deeply as musicians do.

1. How to be a
Rock Star developer
Sean Trelford & his dad (@ptrelford)
DDD East Anglia, Cambridge 2017

2. Outline of this interactive slide show
• Rock Star Programmers in the wild
• and Ninjas, Boy Scouts and other analogies
• How to rock your interview
• Guitar 747
• How to rock on the job!
• Literally

3. .Net literally Rocks

4. Developers rock guitar (mostly Les Pauls)
Russ Miles Dylan Beattie

5. But Ukeleles
are cool too
A Fun(ctional) music DSL -
Domain Specific Languages -
to compute Ukulele tabs from
chords: Share the chords with
Jérémie and he will show you
where to place your fingers !

6. Sam Aaron live codes music with Sonic Pi

7. NDC Oslo
2015
“Sean Trelford, youngest
speaker at #ndcoslo, played a
guitar intro before diving into
F# powering OpenGL” – Liam
Westley

8. “By 7 you are an openstack architect”

9. A few more developer
analogies
Sean Trelford & his dad (@ptrelford)
DDD East Anglia, Cambridge 2017

10. Full Stack
= Loud Speakers

11. “Boy” Scouts?

12. … or the IT Crowd

13. Guitar 101
How to be a Rock Star Developer
Sean Trelford & his dad

14. Anatomy of a guitar

15. Rocksmith (or Guitar Hero with a Guitar)

16. Big Game Hunter: Game in a day

17. Get the T-Shirt: Let’s start a band

18. Dazed and Confused Bass Tab

19. Rocking your interview
How to be a Rock Star Developer
Sean Trelford & his dad

20. Make a cool demo

21. Code Test: Fizz Buzz with if/then/else
for i = 1 to 100 do
let text =
if i % 3 = 0 && i % 5 = 0 then "FizzBuzz"
elif i % 3 = 0 then "Fizz"
elif i % 5 = 0 then "Buzz"
else i.ToString()
Console.WriteLine(text)

22. Code: Fizzbuzz with pattern matching
for i = 1 to 100 do
match i%3, i%5 with
| 0, 0 -> "FizzBuzz"
| 0, _ -> "Fizz"
| _, 0 -> "Buzz"
| _, _ -> i.ToString()
|> Console.WriteLine

23. Code Golf: Fizz Buzz evaluated on Twitter

24. Fizz Buzz in APL

25. Rocking the job!
How to be a Rock Star Developer
Sean Trelford & his dad

26. Day-to-day Essentials

27. Rock stars craft their own Instruments
Gibson Buckethead Signature Les Paul
(Played with Guns & Roses, Primus and
many others)
Flea Signature Bass
(Red Hot Chili Peppers Bass Player)

28. Developers craft their own tools
• Write your own
framework(s)
• Write your own ORM(s)
• Write your own database(s)
• Write your own
programming language(s)

29. Putting it all together
How to be a Rock Star Developer
Sean Trelford & his dad

30. The Gamma: Data Journalism

31. The Gamma: Programming Language

32. Instruments
Hipster Rock Star

33. This was
Spinal Tap
This one goes to 11,
please fill in your
feedback form
accordingly ;)