SPA Conference session: Flying horses: Cleaner code in other languages | |||
| One-line description: | |||
| Session format: | Workshop (150 mins) [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | "PHP, Ruby, Python, Smalltalk, Java, C#, who cares!? It's all the same!"... Well now, is that true? We disagree. We have learned quite a few new ideas using different languages in the past 10 years or so. But then again we might be just fortunate. A lot of developers might be stuck in one language for years and years. So if you are stuck, this is your 2 hours intensive workshop out to get you out of your comfort zone. If you are lucky to work in different languages, this is your 2 hours of fun, playing around. For both of you, this is your 2 hour hands on learning and exchanging ideas experience. In this workshop we explore how you typically solve problems in different languages and how it can inspire you to do things differently in your current working environment. We will do this in a real SPA/XP Day workshop fashion: we invite experts in programming to learn from each others habits, language tricks and skills, without getting into language X vs language Y wars. The objective is to inspire and be inspired by other people's ways of doing stuff. | ||
| Audience background: | Programmers who have some experience in different languages | ||
| Benefits of participating: | - gain new perspectives on using different programming languages - improve your programming skills - share experiences, learn from your peers | ||
| Materials provided: | Prepared samples; participants are expected to bring their own laptops | ||
| Process: | We bring some prepared program samples in a mainstream language (Java and C#) that have been literally translated into Python and Ruby and others. We ask participants to clean these up using the idioms from the language in question. Although we will have examples prepared in a few specific languages, we allow and encourage people to use a language of their choice. (if you plan to attend and would like the workshop to be prepared in another language, please let us know). We will mix and mingle people to get a lot of eyes on several results and change them along the way. The first part's aim is for people to inspire an get inspired by different ways of solving problems in a programming language. In the second part of the workshop we will brainstorm learning moments from the first part of the workshop; Learning moments on language constructs or on different ways to look at problem solving though use of another language. Then, in groups we create advertisements or campaigns for promoting these new ideas (or maybe campaigns to discourage them). | ||
| Detailed timetable: | 10 min. Introduction 15 min. Setting up development environment 15 min. Studying exercises - making first improvement 50 min. Making one small improvements - rotating pairs 10 min. Brainstorming examples and forming groups 15 min. Making poster like presentation 10 min. Presenting 15 min. Discussion & wrap up (+10 slack) | ||
| Outputs: | The output will be in the form of posters highlighting samples with explanation. | ||
| History: | This session has been run at Agile Open Holland 2009 and will be run at XP Days Benelux 2009 | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Marc Evers Piecemeal Growth |
2. Rob Westgeest Westgeest Consultancy |
3. Willem van den Ende Living Software B.V. |
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