Romeu Moura
Absurdism Lobbyist
Paris, France
Endless conversation — with friends, compilers — on art, equivocacy, Symmathesy, methods, absurdism, dialectic, paradigm jumps, serendipity.
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Area of Expertise
Topics
Programming languages are to paradigms as the law is to ethics
Using a OO language will not make your code OO. Using an FO language will not make your code FP.
The tool will not think for you.
Let’s talk about paradigms and why care about them.
Programming and Reasoning
(This is a hands-on lab with limited capacity)
In this session, Romeu and Mathias will work on a coding problem, while debating their design choices, and the philosophy underlying those choices. You're invited to challenge the presenters and change their minds. Be ready for a mix of over- and underdesign, intuition and analysis, design principles and rule-breaking.
Let's model modelling
What do we talk about when we talk about modelling?
Can we collaborate and create a (some?) model of the act of modelling? What would that model be used for ? Why is it not a meta-model?
This is a collaborative session, not a training, we are bringing and contrasting our own ideas of what modelling is and what it is for and we are creating a shared model of what is modelling, I shall bring some definitions and suggestions and facilitation.
We will need a critical mass (say 10) of people that want to model but (space permitting) we can have observers that just want to watch the discussion and ask some questions.
Hermeneutical violence - how can we avoid this uncomfortable awkardness?
Learning to defend ourselves from the mechanisms that prevent us from making sense. Mechanisms that force us to remain in a discomfort because of a lack of understanding. That even make us doubt our own experience.
You may sometimes have trouble grasping some concepts, understanding the other person's point of view or behavior, or whatever it is that is causing you discomfort or tension. When you are able to make sense of a phenomenon that may have seemed nebulous or that you could not connect all the pieces, you are doing hermeneutics. Hermeneutical violence is when we make interpretation difficult for the other, deliberately or not. This talk aims to raise awareness about the process and to avoid or arm oneself against this type of violence.
Evil mob programming
We do an ensemble/mob programming over a kata, but some of the participants are secretly saboteurs! Like a game of "werewolf"
The idea is that a saboteur does not want to be found right? So a saboteur will make believable sabotage! And hence we end up living team dynamics we could live in real life situations and the team tries to solve them, while coding, and fighting the sabotage instead of the saboteur.
Evil ensemble modelling
A modelling session together but a random number of participants are saboteurs
the saboteurs are trying not to get caught
What can we try to make the modelling itself useful to all of us and even maybe the sabotage itself useful?
Est-il possible de réduire l'aide infligée ?
L’aide infligée c’est quand nous avons l’illusion d’aider l’autre mais qu’on s’occupe de soi sans s’en rendre compte. C’est le cadeau que nous nous sentons obligé.e.s d’accepter en remerciant poliment. C’est la réunion que votre manager organise “pour vous” alors qu’elle n’est utile qu’à ellui.
Ce sont ces thématiques que nous vous proposons d’explorer ensemble. Nous ferons le lien avec les dynamiques de groupe, la communication et l’expression de soi.
Nous aborderons également des outils (triangle de karpman, Communication NonViolente…) pour nous aider à naviguer à l’intérieur de situations complexes, et nous offrir une opportunité de vivre plus d’alignement entre nos valeurs, nos actions et nos ressentis.
The geometry of Meaning
The hardest problem is naming because linguistics IS cognitive science, in this "Papers We Love" of Peter Gardenfors’s “Geometry of Meaning” book we’ll cover the use of geometry to better understand how we think/communicate, what is a domain, properties, DDD
A dramatic reading of the agile manifesto
The Agile Manifesto is 75 words and I will read them and zoom into them and try to make them tangible and give a lot of exemples and connect you to what I find beautiful in it
Let us connect to the beauty of following plans, processes, tools, comprehensive documentations and contract negotiation! (yay!)
Bourdieu's social theory applied to tech
Every workplace, every community, and in fact every social interaction, is governed by various forces, hidden power structures, implicit oppression and submission. We oppress people by accident, and we are oppressed by others by accident.
Bourdieu's social theory (with concepts like “symbolic violence", “cultural capital” and “hexis”) explain what is happening. By understanding what he meant, we learn how each of us influences and is influenced by the people around us, in ways that we wouldn't expect.
This talk tries to make Bourdieu's ideas accessible. Learn how to improve your environment immediately; see why meritocracy is a dangerous lie; recognise oppression and submission when it happens; and gain the tools to fight it day to day.
Big corps as little panopticons. Agile coaches as colonial imperialists
Without any big conspiracy (nor any bad person on top) We have created dysfunctional corporate cultures where waste reins, sadness is rampant and the majority has abandoned hopes of changing.
It is a system where every participant is oppressed and also complicit in their oppression.
This talk aims to help you see the system and in seing it arm yourself to fight it. This talk also aims to convince you that you can, in fact, make a difference.
TDD : Beyond the intro
Ok beyond the "test first, then test guiding then Red green refactor" stuff : what is the fuss all about?"
In this hands-on we'll cover that, we'll cover why to do TDD even if you're doing a hackathon and throwing away the code: TDD as socratic dialogue, tdd as mindfulness, the design goals behind the tool.
To do that I'll start by showing you how I teach TDD to people (so, if you are a beginner you are also welcome), slowing down in each part and doing techniques of lazy-naming, branch reduction, purposeful-bad-faith, etc
Then we shall dive into the why.
Rinseless-Brushing : a tale of practices
Every adoption of every practice runs in similar patterns of problems of fetichisation, dogmatism, mechanical application, silver bullets and nihilism.
Let's explore the common thread of those with a narrative on toothbrushing.
Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism
Every adoption of every practice runs in similar patterns of problems of fetichisation, dogmatism, mechanical application, silver bullets and nihilism.
Let's explore the common thread of those with a narrative on toothbrushing.
Struggling against reaction (and the fear of pain)
Every attempt of system change will have an unconscious resistance on everyone (including those trying to change) let’s take a look on how that happens and how that happens and how some people tried to fight it in the past
A complexity of complexities: navigating while overwhelmed
Complexity is the bread and butter of every modeler, designer, architect and developer.
We have many techniques to reduce complexity, to Master complexity : to try to get a control of what is happening.
We also have a lot of techniques to thrive inside complexity: to exist while lost.
Let’s try to reduce the suffering we can live in complex situations and complex codebases
Reading code under the influence of one’s emotions
We talk a lot about writing "beautiful" code but never about reading the "ugly" one! Yet we read more than we write and "ugly" is more frequent than "beautiful"! Suffer less! Arm yourself to improve your skill at reading code, to fight the tendency to needless despise your fellow Devs to make sense out of the ball of mud while under the influence of your emotions.