Lambda Calculus in Clojure (Part...
Sergio Rodrigo Royo
- By Raquel M Carmena
- Posted 06 Jan 2018
Living a Coderetreat as a facilitator
Last 18th of November, I lived my first experience facilitating a Coderetreat. We celebrated the Global Day of Coderetreat, an annual event in which Coderetreats take place simultaneously around all the world. For those people who never attended a Coderetreat, it's a full day event...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 08 Dec 2017
Introducing Interaction-Driven Design
Before reading this post, I strongly recommend you read the two previous blog posts that serve as a foundation to this blog: MVC, Delivery Mechanism and Domain Model and A Case for Outside-In Development. Most software projects become very difficult to maintain and evolve after...
- By Richard Wild
- Posted 23 Nov 2017
Java Optionals For More Expressive Code
Any of us who has programmed in a language that permits null references will have experienced what happens when you try to dereference one. Whether it results in a segfault or a NullPointerException, it’s always a bug. Tony Hoare described it as his billion-dollar mistake....
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 17 Nov 2017
Software Design Bias
This week we had a software design night at Codurance. We spent almost three hours talking about many interesting things but there were a few things that really stuck with me: We all have software design bias. Project after project, we build our software design...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 17 Nov 2017
Fractured Skill: Compartmentalising Software Development
An assembly line is where the machine or a process directs the person to perform a well-defined task. Here, the person is little more than a piece of the machinery to churn out the same product over and over again. There is no room for...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 23 Oct 2017
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)...
- By Halima Koundi
- Posted 01 Oct 2017
Find a workplace where you can grow
Surround yourself with people who expect more from you Many studies have shown the great impact of teachers expectations on students achievements. [...] expectations exert powerful influences upon both student and teacher behavior whether the expectations come from an external source or are held internally...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 20 Sep 2017
MVC, Delivery Mechanism and Domain Model
Model-View-Controller (or MVC for short) is one of the most misunderstood design patterns in software design. MVC has its origins in the SmallTalk community in the late 70s but it was only in 1988 that it was expressed as general concept in an article by...
- By Mashooq Badar, Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 21 Aug 2017
A reflection on Software Craftsmanship
Many people inside and outside the Software Craftsmanship community refer to Craftsmanship as a “Metaphor” for Software Development. We ourselves often refer to Software Craftsmanship as a metaphor without thinking too much on what it means to us. Thinking deeper, and looking at our behaviours...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 02 Aug 2017
Light Access - A simple JDBC DSL
I prefer not to couple my entities (or data structures as I prefer to call them) to my database, neither via annotations nor via frameworks that use naming convention. I like to have total freedom to map whatever data in whatever format I have stored...
- By Raquel M Carmena
- Posted 09 Jul 2017
P3 Quality
What is software quality? Is it measurable? What should we focus on when we want to improve quality? It is still believed that quality in software is about automated functional tests. A manager worried about quality tends to contract external companies to automate functional tests....
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 13 Jun 2017
How do I convince...?
How can I convince my team to adopt TDD? How do I convince my manager that we should do pair programming? How do I convince the business that we should invest in Continuous Integration? Those are questions we normally get everywhere we go to talk...
- By Halima Koundi
- Posted 04 Jun 2017
NCrafts in 20 pictures
NCrafts 2017 is a two days conference in Paris. I had the chance to also attend an event storming workshop run by Alberto Brandolini a day before the conference. It was full of fun, socialising and learning. Here are some of my takeways of those...
- By Halima Koundi
- Posted 19 May 2017
My first year at Codurance
I have always been able to deliver what was asked and I was able to understand and pick up new project quickly, but the code base I would work on would always grow into something people would fear to touch, working with it would become...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 16 Jan 2017
Hierarchy of opinion
The word opinion has two distinct meanings according to the Oxford Dictionary: A view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. A statement of advice by an expert on a professional matter. Synonyms to the word opinion are: belief, judgement,...
- By David Hatanian
- Posted 03 Oct 2016
What I wish I knew when I started as a software developer
Having worked in the software engineering field for 6 years, I sometimes pause and consider how much I have learned since I started my career. One thing that strikes me is how many things I would want to tell just-out-of-college me if I had the...
- By Ioan Fagarasan
- Posted 08 Aug 2016
Communicating Design
Software design is crucial. It is the foundation of an application. Much like a blueprint, it provides a common platform for parties from all backgrounds. It facilitates understanding, collaboration, and development. Design should not be considered only an element of development. It should not live...
- By Ioan Fagarasan
- Posted 25 Jul 2016
Thoughts on Coupling in Software Design
Coupling is a software metric that describes how closely connected two routines or modules are. It is a measure of quality. The concept was introduced by Larry Constantine in the 1960s and was formulized in a 1974 article for the IBM Systems Journal, Structured Design,...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 16 May 2016
Bowling Kata in Clojure, F# and Scala
In one of our evening apprenticeship meetings, a pair was doing the Bowling Kata in Java. After reviewing their code, I thought that it would be a good idea to do it myself. Every craftsman at Codurance is a polyglot developer and, although we have...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 12 Apr 2016
We did it wrong, but not all was in vain
Yes, there was over engineering. Loads of it. Back in the mid 90s, when I started my career as a developer, the goal was to become an architect. No serious developer would dare writing a single line of code before selecting our preferred design patterns—we...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 03 Mar 2016
Cohesion - The cornerstone of Software Design
Cohesion is one of the most important concepts in software design. Cohesion is at the core of the vast majority of good design principles and patterns out there, guiding separation of concerns and maintainability. The term cohesion (alongside coupling) was first introduced by Larry Constantine...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 15 Jan 2016
Premature Microservices
Building your app from the very start as microservices is not a great idea! Their deployment is complex - regardless of how good your microservices infra is. They create boundaries in your application that resist change. Software applications are complex systems and complex systems are...
- By Pedro Santos
- Posted 15 Jan 2016
GitHubAnimator
The Beginning Inspired by my friend @SamirTalwar and the initiative he set upon himself to automate the world I picked up on an idea I had many months ago. Automating the generation of presentations using GitHub commits. What Problem am I Trying to Solve? Often...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 10 Jan 2016
Clojure VIM Environment
The Cursive plugin for Clojure is now out of its beta testing phase. I have been using it throughout its beta program and, I must say, it is pretty good. Sure, the refactoring capabilities are not quite on a par with those of IntelliJ for...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 22 Nov 2015
Changing Scalatra and sbt default directories
Conventions are not always good. I recently started a new internal web project at Codurance and I decided to use Scala. As I'm not a fan of big frameworks, I chose Scalatra as a micro web framework. The first challenge was that I wanted to...
- By Mani Sarkar
- Posted 22 Nov 2015
My first couple of months at Codurance
Some background Some of you may know me from the various meetups in the city, especially my attendance at a number of LJC and LSCC meetup events. Attending these events I learnt about various conferences like Devoxx, SoCraTes, JAX London, Java2Days, OpenFest, and I ended...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 01 Nov 2015
Practicing Well-Crafted Design
Katas are great, but not enough. In the past year I’ve been trying to find ways to teach our craftsmen and apprentices how to design software. Although we could discuss good design principles, it was very difficult to find a way to practice them. Katas...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 29 Sep 2015
Code review: Why are we doing it?
Developers across many organisations adopted code reviews as one of their core practices. Although that sounds like a very reasonable thing to do, over time the goal that led to the adoption of the practice is forgotten and the only thing left is the mindless...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 10 Sep 2015
Interview with Sandro Mancuso - Software Craftsmanship
Thinking of code as a beautiful work of art is a mistake. But at the same time we need to start seeing coding as a genuine skill that deserves professional recognition, says leading Software Craftsmanship advocate and JAX London speaker Sandro Mancuso. This interview was...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 17 Aug 2015
Increasing complexity one entity at a time
While working on one of our internal tools, I decided to make a small comprise and not follow my own advice. We are building a mini CRM tool and the initial requirements were: Maintain information about the companies we are dealing with; Maintain a list...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 17 Jun 2015
Inflection Point
We all say that software design is all about trade-offs but how do we actually reason about it? How do we decide how much code we are going to write for a given task? Is the easiest thing that could possibly work the right approach?...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 12 May 2015
Does TDD really lead to good design?
Recently I tweeted that TDD can’t lead to a good design if we don’t know what good design looks like. I was also saying that we probably should teach design before TDD (or at least, at the same time). This tweet led to a discussions...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 06 May 2015
Q&A about The Software Craftsman
Our co-founder Sandro Mancuso was interviewed by Ben Linders from InfoQ. Below is the full transcript. In the book The Software Craftsman, Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride Sandro Mancuso explores how craftsmanship plays a role in agile software development. The book contains stories, examples and practical advice...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 20 Mar 2015
User Story Guidelines
Disclaimer: This post was extracted from an internal Codurance document used to help our apprentices to learn how we work. We all understand that each project is different and that by no means we can apply exactly the same techniques and practices everywhere. However, the...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 15 Mar 2015
Rethinking Pair Programming
By default, we always do our work in pairs. We strongly believe that the quality achieved by two people working on the same task is superior to when done by a single person. However, there are times where pairing is not very efficient. Pair programming...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 27 Jan 2015
Balanced Abstraction Principle
One of the things that make code complicated to read and understand is when the instructions inside a method are at different levels of abstraction. Let's assume that our application only allows the logged-in user to see trips from her friends. If users are not...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 14 Dec 2014
Code quality cannot be measured
We cannot effectively measure what we can't precisely define. And this is definitely true when it comes to software quality. What is software quality? What does quality mean? Quality for whom? Compared to what? In which context? Are we talking about quality from a developer's...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 13 Dec 2014
Naming Test Classes and Methods
What should my first test be? What should I test next? These are common questions that I'm asked over and over again. I quite often ask these questions myself. Deciding on what to test is hard. Deciding on the order that things should be tested...
- By Toby Retallick
- Posted 06 Dec 2014
What is it like to be a Codurance Apprentice?
This month Codurance is celebrating its first birthday. A lot has happened during that time, including the hiring of two apprentices. One of which, I am pleased to say is me! Three months into my apprenticeship, I thought I would provide some insight into how...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 26 Nov 2014
Codurance - Looking forward to 2015
One year ago Mash and I were thinking how great it would be to be surrounded by great craftsmen, work with good clients, mentor talented apprentices, and a have decent office. We thought to ourselves: “We don’t want a company with employees. We want a...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 10 Nov 2014
Not all managers are stupid
(The following story was a bit altered in order to keep it short(ish) and to protect the innocents) I still remember the day when our managers in a large organisation told us we should still go live after we reported a major problem a couple...
- By Samir Talwar
- Posted 26 May 2014
A Software Craftsman Is
Someone who aspires to quality. Someone who considers the means as well as the ends. Alternatively, one who realises that everything has more than one outcome, and that as many of them as possible should be considered. Someone who does not build unnecessary things. Someone...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 24 May 2014
TDD is NOT (just) about you
Recently, another big debate about TDD started on Twitter and blogosphere. Is TDD dead? (No, that's ridiculous.) Does it improve or damage our design? Does it make us faster or slow us down? Seb Rose compiled a list of blog posts and tweets about it,...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 13 Apr 2014
Screencast - Explanatory Methods
On 9th of April 2014, we created our first screencast on our new YouTube channel. The idea is to have a series of (reasonably) short videos explaining some of the techniques we use when developing software. The videos will range from basic to advanced topics...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 10 Apr 2014
Keeping the domain in the core
Inspired by Alistair Cockburn's excellent article on Hexagonal Architecture, on our current project we have kept the core domain of our application independent of the infrastructure by taking the simple decision to divide our code into two main sections (higher level packages): infrastructure and core....
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 11 Mar 2014
Just Another Day at the Office
On 4th of March 2014, a few days before my baby boy Samuel completed two months, a well-regarded cardiologist—let's call him Dr. Smith—gave us the news that Samuel had a heart condition called pulmonary valve stenosis. Dr. Smith's recommendation was that Samuel had a heart...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 03 Mar 2014
Software Craftsmanship book is now finished
Yesterday a wonderful 19-month journey came to an end. I released the last chapter of my book Software Craftsmanship: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride. As an avid reader since a young age, writing a book was always something I wanted to do. For me, it didn't matter...
- By Mashooq Badar
- Posted 08 Feb 2014
Resist the "Just in Case"
Of all the projects I have worked on a big regret has been; adding complexity where it was not needed. I was recently reminded of, how easy it is to fall into that trap. We are in the process of developing a new feature for...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 21 Nov 2013
Starting a Software Craftsmanship Community
Two people that meet regularly are already a community. The first thing to know if you want to start a community is that it is much simpler than you think. You just need another person that is keen to meet regularly and a public space...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 23 Aug 2013
Test Deafness
A few months ago I was talking to a musician friend of mine. He is also Brazilian, same age as me, and moved to the UK on the same year I did. As we were talking about music, I mentioned I like punk rock. He...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 29 Jul 2013
My birthday wish list
Today is my birthday. Yay! And since today is all about me, I will choose what I want as a present. As a developer, here's what I want: I want developers to be empowered to do whatever they need to do to satisfy the real...
- By Sandro Mancuso
- Posted 10 Dec 2012
The Wrong Notion of Time
No one wakes up in the morning and say "Today I'm gonna screw up. Today I'm gonna piss my boss and all my team mates off writing the worst code I could possibly write". Well, there are always exceptions but normally no one does that....
Software is our passion.
We are software craftspeople. We build well-crafted software for our clients, we help developers to get better at their craft through training, coaching and mentoring, and we help companies get better at delivering software.
Latest Blogs
One Year of Codurance Barcelona...
Guillem Fernandez
Functions
Christian Panadero Martinez
Useful Links
Contact Us
London EC1V 0JR
Phone: +44 207 4902967
Carrer Aragó, 208
08011, Barcelona
Phone: +34 689 723 737
Email: hello@codurance.com