Living on borrowed time; or Dude, where are the docs?

The project team is slogging through an invisible morass and its bus factor (https://goo.gl/68Lis6) is approaching zero (critical information is lost even though no one left the team). If this seems familiar to you, you may be suffering from the effects of poor documentation whether you know it or not. You can prevent this scourge, but getting your team to invest in documentation may not be easy. Come to this session and find out how to sell the value of good docs and how to produce them. Avoid dead documentation just as you would dead code, by understanding what to include, what to leave out, and how to create living documentation that never goes stale. Practical techniques based on real world experience will be presented, with plenty of examples. Start raising your project's bus factor today.

I feel very strongly that project documentation is a critical part to project success. Unfortunately, it is often neglected or worse, not done at all.

Over the past several years while working as a senior dev/architect, I took the initiative to write/update/maintain documentation for my client's projects and the net effect of those efforts on those projects is very positive. Based on these experiences, I want to share my knowledge with others and evangelize the importance of documentation.

This will be an updated version of my "Effectively Documenting your Development Project" presentation that will put additional focus selling the value of docs and on preventing a bad bus factor. I presented the prior version of this talk at CodePaLOUsa, Path to Agility and DogFoodCon, each time to large and very attentive audiences so I believe this topic will resonate with CodeMash attendees.

Dogs and Cats, Living Together: Kotlin, Spring Boot and REST on Azure

Kotlin is a statically typed programming language by JetBrains that can enable more concise and understandable code than Java without sacrificing performance, safety or 100% Java compatibility. Spring Boot accelerates the creation of stand-alone Java/JVM based web apps with minimal coding. And Azure makes it straightforward to deploy and host Java/JVM based web apps. Come to this session and learn how to use all of this goodness together to develop and deploy REST APIs. Attendees will learn how to use Spring Initializr to create the project, how to use Kotlin and Spring Boot to develop a web app with concise, boilerplate free code that exposes REST APIs and how to deploy and host this web app in Azure. This session will wrap things up by using a HTML/JavaScript client to test the REST APIs. The GitHub repository for this session will be made available beforehand so feel free to bring along a laptop to walk through the sample code together.

AWS Java Lambda Functions with Kotlin

Developing an AWS Java Lambda function using Kotlin is possible because Kotlin is 100% compatible with Java. In this talk, attendees will learn how to implement the necessary AWS interfaces and classes to accept an incoming JSON request, return a JSON response and implement logging that integrates with AWS CloudWatch. Attendees will also learn how to package and deploy the lambda function to AWS. Comparisons will be made to Java to demonstrate how Kotlin makes developing an AWS Lambda function simpler and more concise. Attendees will leave this session with the knowledge necessary to develop their own AWS Lambda functions using Kotlin.

I am a long time Java developer who is now using Kotlin because I believe the concise syntax of Kotlin is very useful, readable and productive. This is especially true for typical/tedious boilerplate code. A key Kotlin benefit is that it is 100% compatible with Java. This makes it very suitable for tasks where Java is required. In the case of AWS Lambda functions, Kotlin makes developing them simpler and more concise due the syntactical conciseness of the language and the elimination of boilerplate code required by comparable Java implementations.

The GitHub repo for all of the demo code will be publicized and made available prior to the talk. To build and package the code, Java 8 SDK and Kotlin 1.2 need to be installed.

I previously presented this talk at Beer City Code 2018 in Grand Rapids, MI.

Living on borrowed time; or Dude, where are the docs?

The project team is slogging through an invisible morass and its bus factor (https://goo.gl/68Lis6) is approaching zero (critical information is lost even though no one left the team). If this seems familiar to you, you may be suffering from the effects of poor documentation whether you know it or not. You can prevent this scourge, but getting your team to invest in documentation may not be easy. Come to this session and find out how to sell the value of good docs and how to produce them. Avoid dead documentation just as you would dead code, by understanding what to include, what to leave out, and how to create living documentation that never goes stale. Practical techniques based on real world experience will be presented, with plenty of examples. Start raising your project's bus factor today.

AWS Java Lambda Functions with Kotlin

Kotlin is a statically typed programming language that enables concise and understandable code without sacrificing performance, safety or 100% Java compatibility. That last bit is key. Developing an AWS Java Lambda function using Kotlin is possible because Kotlin is 100% compatible with Java. In this talk, attendees will learn how to implement the necessary AWS interfaces and classes to accept an incoming JSON request, return a JSON response and implement logging that integrates with AWS CloudWatch. Attendees will also learn how to package and deploy the lambda function to AWS. Comparisons will be made to Java to demonstrate how Kotlin makes developing an AWS Lambda function simpler and more concise. Attendees will leave this session with the knowledge necessary to develop their own AWS Lambda functions using Kotlin.

What Should Be Your Mobile Development Strategy and Why

Your organization or business wants to provide a mobile solution to better serve your customers and/or your workforce.  The goal is to reach the widest range of devices possible; but the solution must be developed quickly and cost effectively.  You have heard about the hybrid/web approaches and the pseudo native approaches with their ability to target multiple platforms and you are intrigued.  You have also heard that native provides a better user experience and higher performance. This session will kick off by giving an overview of the popular available approaches, using my architecture and development experiences at clients and at Root Insurance who have utilized these approaches to solve their mobile business needs. This will level set the knowledge of the attendees and allow everyone to have a good understanding of the available approaches. We will then have an open and collaborative discussion on the pros and cons of each approach. You will leave this session better informed and with information that will help you and your organization decide which approach is best for your mobile solution needs.

Stop playing bug report ping pong by writing good bug reports

Our ping pong match begins with the tester serving the bug report to development. Unfortunately, the bug report is missing information that allows it to be reproduced and fixed. So, the dev returns serve by rejecting the bug as not reproducible. The tester hits the bug report back with a bit more information. This goes on and on until finally, the bug report gets enough information to allow the dev to fix the bug and win the point. Ping pong may be fun to play but it's a terrible way to report and fix bugs.

Come to this session and learn how writing good bug reports will stop bug report ping pong. We will start by discussing how bug report ping pong impacts your projects. We will then dive into writing a good bug report by learning how to describe observed and expected behavior, craft easy to follow reproduction steps, collect and capture environmental information and finally, write a summary that helps devs quickly identify and analyze the bug. It's time to put those bug report ping pong paddles away and this session will show you how.

When is it time to change jobs?

Making more money should not be the primary reason to change jobs. So, why does one change jobs? And how does one choose where to go next? Being passionate about what you do is the key. In this session, you will learn how to effectively evaluate your current job and when it's time to consider something else. You will also learn how to objectively choose between multiple opportunities and your current job. Along the way, you'll hear about a senior developer's journey from dev to QA to manager and back again; and learn what considerations prompted those career moves. Remember: the best person to take care of yourself is yourself. Attend this session and gain insight into doing just that.