Newsletter - October 2017

Hi,

This month we've taken a reflective view of the first SC London Conference, made a case for Outside-In Development, and looked at Functional Programming and Reactive Architectures. There's also a link to the SC London 2017 videos; if you haven't seen these yet, then you're in for a treat.

The Codurance Team

P.S Missed our last newsletter? Catch up here.

[Our Reflection On ... SC London 2017]

Earlier this month, we helped to organise and run SC London 2017. This was our first 'formal' conference, and whilst we've been helping to run Socrates UK and the LSCC for many years, SC London was a journey into the relative unknown. SC London was an outcome of one of our internal initiative circles (https://codurance.com/practices/2016/05/13/initiative-circles/) . Our main objective with SC London was to bring together members of the Software Craftsmanship community and people for who are perhaps new to the values and principles of the movement.

What struck us the most was how many people fell into the latter category. A quick poll before Sandro's keynote on Day One showed a majority of people who didn't necessarily identify themselves as part of an SC community. This surprised us, particularly given the association and support from communities such as the LSCC, Softwerskammer, SC Turkey and XTC, to name just a few.

The theme of SC London focused on the journey of our movement; where have we come from, what does it mean to be a member of this movement, and where are we headed? It was therefore, encouraging to see so many new faces at the event and it raises many different questions for us as organisers, members, or contributors to the movement.

If we consider the data presented by Sandro in his opening keynote, it feels like our movement is at a tipping point with regards to its relevance and popularity. It will be interesting to see how things develop over the next 12 months, particularly in the run up to SC London 2018. We hope we will continue to see more people taking an active interest in improving our craft.

The Author

David is our Head of Business Development and Marketing. He has a passion for supporting and building technology communities, believing that cool things happen when smart people come together to learn and share ideas.

SC London 2017 Videos

All of the videos from SC London are now published and available to watch here. You can also subscribe for updates (http://sc-london.com/#subscribe) on SC London 2018, to gain updates on super early bird tickets and speaker announcements.

MVC, Delivery Mechanism And Domain Model

Our co-founder, Sandro Mancuso, takes a comprehensive look at the MVC pattern, Delivery Mechanism and Domain Model. He provides advice on where people often get caught out as well a more effective approach.

A Case for Outside-In Development

There is no reason to have a backend when there is no front-end. There is no reason to have an API when there is no one to consume it. There is no reason to have a class when there is no other class (or framework) to use it. There is no reason to have a method when there is no one calling it. By Sandro Mancuso.

The tragedy of 100% code coverage

Dan Lebero's article takes a look at what happens when TDD, or at the very least writing unit tests, is applied religiously and without critical thought.

Mocking Is A Code Smell

'... it’s common to see developers get so sucked into the dogma of TDD that they think they absolutely must achieve 100% code coverage, by any means necessary, even if that means they have to make their codebase more complex to pull it off.' Article by Eric Elliot.

My 20-Year Experience of Software Development Methodologies

Zwischenzugs' article uses the concept of Collective Fictions to reflect on his experiences of working with different methodologies and how each new approach is collectively viewed as a form of best practice.

Category Theory For Programmers I - Monoids

We've been running an internal Category Theory meetup at our offices for several months now. This article looks at some of the core concepts of category theory and by extension, functional programming.

Monoids, semigroups, and friends

Part of a larger series on the relationship between design patterns and category theory.

Our Craftsman, Jorge Gueorguiev Garcia, reflects on his recent usage of Clojure in a project, his realisation that he was effectively writing OO code with the syntac of Clojure, and how a series of katas helped him to refocus on the functional paradigm.

Functional Programming and Reactive Architecture Part 1

Our Craftsman, Alessandro Di Gioia, on how functional programming, reactive programming, and the actor model can help us to deal with both essential and accidental complexity.

Conventional Interfaces in Functional Programming

Our Craftsman, Carlos Morea de la Chica, takes a look at Sequences as Conventional Interfaces, with samples given in Haskell.

How To Do Code Reviews Like A Human (Part 1)

Michael Lynch's article explores the importance of the human equation in code reviews, including the traps of miscommunication.

Find A Workplace Where You Can Grow

Our Craftswoman, Halima Koundi, reflects on finding the right environment that actively encourages self development.