SPA 2011 Roundup
16 Jun 2011A summary of my SPA (Software Practice Advancement) Conference experience.
Node.js
The session on node.js on Sunday, was my first serious introduction to server side js and node.js.
Start by downloading the source at http://nodejs.org/#download, extract the source do ./configure and make install in the source directory. Takes a few minutes to build. The build works painlessly on OSX and Linux. If you are on OSX install it via brew
http://shapeshed.com/journal/setting-up-nodejs-and-npm-on-mac-osx/
The documentation is at http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.8/api/
Node.js is a good way to get into event driven non-blocking programming. It’s easy to do this when you think about doing things (sending responses, rendering) only when things happen.
For example, when data arrives on a socket listening on the server an event is triggered. Code is executed when events are triggered. Instead of polling and waiting for stuff to happen, which can be very in-efficient.
This got me thinking about tiny programs running in a system and only doing things as a result of something being triggered. This could lead to us writing code that is only needed by the system. Code that is not used by the system (i.e not triggered) are culled.
Treating JavaScript as a programming language.
Going on with the js theme, the guys from Caplin Systems, showed how to build applications with js while still testing the full stack. We were shown how to use Eclipse and JSTestDriver. We were also taken thorough building the full application stack using domain and view models in js. While using a Model View View Model pattern with knockout.js to bind the domain to client HTML.
Master of Puppets
I had mixed feelings about attending this session but in the end it was worth it. Puppet is an open source platform to manage systems, similar to Chef. Puppet and Chef use recipes to build and configure machines. It seems to work smoothly with Ubuntu, using apt get to install and configure the software as specified in a recipe. Still no good Windows support though, which is going to make it hard to use at work.
It is also possible to use Puppet to control/build virtual machines using vagrant. There is also a VMware API and a ruby gem for the API . For further reading on this please follow the links below.
http://www.jedi.be/blog/2009/11/17/controlling-virtual-machines-with-an-API/
http://rubyvmware.rubyforge.org/
Non-Technical Sessions
I enjoyed the non-techy sessions very much. To start it off there was Rachel Davies’ session on building trust within teams. The slides from this are up now http://www.agilexp.com/presentations/SPA-ImprovingTrustInTeams.pdf
Benjamin Mitchell’s session on double loop learning was insightful. It made me think about how much my perception of things don’t necessarily reflect the reality. It is better to seek knowledge than take actions based on assumptions. It became clear how easily we can fall into this trap. There is more reading on double loop learning and the work by Chris Argyris here http://bit.ly/Argyris
Developer anarchy at forward clearly illustrated that to go faster, you need great devs and ditch technology that is slowing down feedback loops. It’s not just about building feedback loops, its how fast you can react to those loops is what matters. On the Internet scale, we’d would have to respond in seconds, minutes and at least in hours. Definitely not in days, sprints or months. In the conversation afterwards, learnt that they spent about 6 months re-building the tools and infrastructure that let them deliver at the speed that the do now.
Comic Communication and Collaboration completed the SPA experience with much hilarity and fun. Think I could try my hand and xkcd style comics. More importantly, the insight learned was ,communicate by talking with peers, or communicate by producing something (i.e readable code, working software). If you have to communicate via email or worse through a 3rd party (i.e project manager) don’t bother. It’s not as effective as you think.
All in all, a very well organised conference, including the invited rants. Looking forward to next year.
Many thanks to those who organised it.