Neal Ford
Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler
Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.
Presentations
Agile Engineering Practices
5:00 PM MDT
Most of the time when people talk about agile software development, they talk about project and planning practices and never mention actual development practices. This talk delves into best development practices for agile projects, covering all of its aspects.
Most of the time when people talk about agile software development, they talk about project and planning practices but never mention actual development, as if development where an afterthought when writing software. This talk bills into the real details of how to do agile development. I discuss best practices like continuous integration, pair programming, how developers should interact with story cards, how to handle enterprise concerns like integration with other software packages, and a slew of other topics related to agile software development.
Clojure Workshop
9:00 AM MDT
In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.
This workshop introduces Clojure to Java developers who might not have seen a Lisp and don’t yet understand why that’s such an advantage. I introduce the language syntax (what little there is of it), cover interoperability with Java, macros, mutlti-methods, and more. I also cover the functional aspects of Clojure, showing its powerful immutable data structures, working with threads and concurrency, and sequences. Beyond just showing syntax, I also show how to build real applications in Clojure, and give you a chance to do the same. Attending this workshop shows enough to pique your interest and show why many of the people who were interested in Java in 1996 are interested in Clojure now.
Clojure Workshop
11:00 AM MDT
In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.
This workshop introduces Clojure to Java developers who might not have seen a Lisp and don’t yet understand why that’s such an advantage. I introduce the language syntax (what little there is of it), cover interoperability with Java, macros, mutlti-methods, and more. I also cover the functional aspects of Clojure, showing its powerful immutable data structures, working with threads and concurrency, and sequences. Beyond just showing syntax, I also show how to build real applications in Clojure, and give you a chance to do the same. Attending this workshop shows enough to pique your interest and show why many of the people who were interested in Java in 1996 are interested in Clojure now.
Build Your Own Technology Radar Workshop for Architects
5:00 PM MDT
A Technology Radar is a tool that forces you to organize and think about near term future technology decisions, both for you and your company. This talk discusses using the radar for personal breadth development, architectural guidance, and governance.
ThoughtWorks Technical Advisory Board creates a “technology radar” twice a year, a working document that helps the company make decisions about interesting technologies and where we spend our time. ThoughtWorks then started conducting radar-building exercises for our clients, which provides a great medium for technologists company-wide to express their opinions about the technologies they use every day. For companies, creating a radar helps you document your technology decisions in a standard format, evaluate technology decisions in an actionable way, and create cross-silo discussions about suitable technology choices. This session describes the radar visualization and how to conduct a radar building session for yourself. After a brief introduction, the bulk of the workshop consists of attendees building a radar for the group, following the same procedure you'll use when you do this exercise at your company. At the end, we'll have created a unique Radar for this event and practiced doing it for yourself.
Continuous Delivery All-day Workshop, Pt. 1: Deployment Pipelines
9:00 AM MDT
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours–sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.
In this workshop we take the unique approach of moving from release back through testing to development practices, analyzing at each stage how to improve collaboration and increase feedback so as to make the delivery process as fast and efficient as possible. At the heart of the workshop is a pattern called the deployment pipeline, which involves the creation of a living system that models your organization's value stream for delivering software. We spend the first half of the workshop introducing this pattern, and discussing how to incrementally automate the build, test and deployment process, culminating in continuous deployment.
Continuous Delivery All-day Workshop, Pt. 1: Deployment Pipelines
10:45 AM MDT
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours–sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.
In this workshop we take the unique approach of moving from release back through testing to development practices, analyzing at each stage how to improve collaboration and increase feedback so as to make the delivery process as fast and efficient as possible. At the heart of the workshop is a pattern called the deployment pipeline, which involves the creation of a living system that models your organization's value stream for delivering software. We spend the first half of the workshop introducing this pattern, and discussing how to incrementally automate the build, test and deployment process, culminating in continuous deployment.
Continuous Delivery All-day Workshop Pt 2: Agile Infrastructure
1:30 PM MDT
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours–sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.
In the second half of the workshop, we introduce agile infrastructure, including the use of Puppet to automate the management of testing and production environments. We'll discuss automating data management, including migrations. Development practices that enable incremental development and delivery will be covered at length, including a discussion of why branching is inimical to continuous delivery, and how practices such as branch by abstraction and componentization provide superior alternatives that enable large and distributed teams to deliver incrementally.
Continuous Delivery All-day Workshop Pt 2: Agile Infrastructure
3:15 PM MDT
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours–sometimes even minutes–no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.
In the second half of the workshop, we introduce agile infrastructure, including the use of Puppet to automate the management of testing and production environments. We'll discuss automating data management, including migrations. Development practices that enable incremental development and delivery will be covered at length, including a discussion of why branching is inimical to continuous delivery, and how practices such as branch by abstraction and componentization provide superior alternatives that enable large and distributed teams to deliver incrementally.
Books
The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))
by Neal Ford
Anyone who develops software for a living needs a proven way to produce it better, faster, and cheaper. The Productive Programmer offers critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use. Master developer Neal Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity--how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer, and avoid repetition--he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code, and become more valuable to your team. You'll learn to:- Write the test before you write the code
- Manage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiously
- Build only what you need now, not what you might need later
- Apply ancient philosophies to software development
- Question authority, rather than blindly adhere to standards
- Make hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programming
- Be sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstraction
- Pick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job
This isn't theory, but the fruits of Ford's real-world experience as an Application Architect at the global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks. Whether you're a beginner or a pro with years of experience, you'll improve your work and your career with the simple and straightforward principles in The Productive Programmer.
The ThoughtWorks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation (Pragmatic Programmers)
by ThoughtWorks Inc.
ThoughtWorks is a well-known global consulting firm; ThoughtWorkers are leaders in areas of design, architecture, SOA, testing, and agile methodologies. This collection of essays brings together contributions from well-known ThoughtWorkers such as Martin Fowler, along with other authors you may not know yet. While ThoughtWorks is perhaps best known for their work in the Agile community, this anthology confronts issues throughout the software development life cycle. From technology issues that transcend methodology, to issues of realizing business value from applications, you'll find it here.
No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology: The 2006 Edition (Pragmatic Programmers)
by
Twenty-seven weekends a year, the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference rolls into another town, featuring the world's best technical speakers and writers. Up until now, you had to go to one of the shows to soak up their collective wisdom. Now, you can hold it in the palm of your hand. The No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology represents topics presented on the tour, written by the speakers who created it. This book allows the authors the chance to go more in depth on the subjects for which they are passionate. It is guaranteed to surprise, enlighten, and broaden your understanding of the technical world in which you live.
The No Fluff, Just Stuff Symposium Series is a traveling conference series for software developers visiting 27 cities a year. No Fluff has put on over 75 symposia throughout the U.S. and Canada, with more than 12,000 attendees so far. Its success has been a result of focusing on high quality technical presentations, great speakers, and no marketing hype. Now this world-class material is available to you in print for the first time.
