This summary is a bit late and my only excuse it that the recent weeks were packed with action. But the good news is: The Schneide Dev Brunch is still alive and gaining traction with an impressive number of participants for the most recent event. The Schneide Dev Brunch is a regular brunch in that you gather together to have a late breakfast or early dinner on a sunday, only that all attendees want to talk about software development (and various other topics). If you bring a software-related topic along with your food, everyone has something to share. We were able to sit in the sun on our roofgarden and enjoy the first warm spring weekend.
We had to do introductory rounds because there were quite some new participants this time. And they brought good topics and insights with them. Let’s have a look at the topics we discussed:
Checker Framework
This isn’t your regular java framework, meant to reside alongside all the other jar files in your dependency folder. The Checker framework enhances java’s type system with “pluggable types”. You have to integrate it in your runtime, your compiler and your IDE to gain best results, but after that you’re nothing less than a superhero among regulars. Imagine pluggable types as additional layers to your class hierarchy, but in the z-axis. You’ll have multiple layers of type hierachies and can include them into your code to aid your programming tasks. A typical use case is the compiler-based null checking ability, while something like Perl’s taint mode is just around the corner.
But, as our speaker pointed out, after a while the rough edges of the framework will show up. It still is somewhat academic and lacks integration sometimes. It’s a great help until it eventually becomes a burden.
Hearing about the Checker framework left us excited to try it sometimes. At least, it’s impressive to see what you can do with a little tweaking at the compiler level.
Getting Stuck
A blog entry by Jeff Wofford inspired one of us to talk about the notion of “being stuck” in software development. Jeff Wofford himself wrote a sequel to the blog entry, differentiating four kinds of stuck. We could relate to the concept and have seen it in the wild before. The notion of “yak shaving” entered the discussion soon. In summary, we discussed the different types of being stuck and getting stuck and what we think about it. While there was no definite result, everyone could take away some insight from the debate.
Zen to Done
One topic was a review of the Zen to Done book on self-organization and productivity improvement. The methodology can be compared to “Getting Things Done“, but is easier to begin with. It defines a bunch of positive habits to try and establish in your everyday life. Once you’ve tried them all, you probably know what works best for you and what just doesn’t resonate at all. On a conceptional level, you can compare Zen to Done to the Clean Code Developer, both implementing the approach of “little steps” and continuous improvement. Very interesting and readily available for your own surveying. There even exists a german translation of the book.
Clean Code Developer mousepads
Speaking of the Clean Code Developer. We at the Softwareschneiderei just published our implementation of mousepads for the Clean Code Developer on our blog. During the Dev Brunch, we reviewed the mousepads and recognized the need for an english version. Stay tuned for them!
Book: Making software
The book “Making software” is a collection of essays from experienced developers, managers and scientists describing the habits, beliefs and fallacies of modern software development. Typical for a book from many different authors is the wide range of topics and different quality levels in terms of content, style and originality. The book gets a recommendation because there should be some interesting reads for everyone inside. One essay was particularly interesting for the reviewer: “How effective is Test-Driven Development?” by Burak Turhan and others. The article treats TDD like a medicine in a clinical trial, trying to determine the primary effects, the most effective dosage and the unwanted side effects. Great fun for every open-minded developer and the origin of a little joke: If there was a pill you could take to improve your testing, would a placebo pill work, too?
Book: Continuous Delivery
This book is the starting point of this year’s hype: “Continuous Delivery” by Jez Humble and others. Does it live up to the hype? In the opinion of our reviewer: yes, mostly. It’s a solid description of all the practices and techniques that followed continuous integration. The Clean Code Developer listed them as “Continuous Integration II” until the book appeared and gave them a name. The book is a highly recommened read for the next years. Hopefully, the practices become state-of-the-art for most projects in the near future, just like it went with CI. The book has a lot of content but doesn’t shy away from repetition, too. You should read it in one piece, because later chapters tend to refer to earlier content quite often.
Three refactorings to grace
The last topic was the beta version of an article about the difference that three easy refactorings can make on test code. The article answered the statement of a participant that he doesn’t follow the DRY principle in test code in a way. It is only available in a german version right now, but will probably be published on the blog anytime soon in a proper english translation.
Epilogue
This Dev Brunch was a lot of fun and had a lot more content than listed here. Some of us even got sunburnt by the first real sunny weather this year. We are looking forward to the next Dev Brunch at the Softwareschneiderei. And as always, we are open for guests and future regulars. Just drop us a notice and we’ll invite you over next time.
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