A view of the wonder world of JavaFX, Scala, Groovy, Java EE, Rich Internet Application technologies with a swerve on development, design and architecture
In this entry, I am handing over the natural keyboard to you. Don’t be afraid. Don’t fret. There is absolutely nothing to be worried about. Just take it and code something wonderful. Code something beautiful, mega-gorgeous, substantial. How about something profound, something that inspires you? Completely tear it up whilst you are in the zone, and when you are finished, teach your programming stuff, your software to someone else. If you are game, you can open-source your ‘wares.
I have been doing this software development thing for so long, now, and I still love it. I will never stop. It is time to inspire others.
We were amazed to find out that we were actually three guitarist, one harmonica player and a supporter. We had spontaneous fun on the area of the living room reserved for musical instruments. I was reminded of the fact, that I had not pick up my own musical instrument for awful long time. We found welcome relief and enjoyment, and it was good to have Maxi, the talented kid, to share our fun.
Kirk Pepperdine
Attendees find the course to be a relearning of everything they thought they knew about performance tuning
Roland Brandqvist (playing Maxi Kabutz electric guitar and singing brilliantly the Police’s Roxanne. Roland has band experience ;-o ) Mario (acoustic guitar; a good guitarist also on electric) Henri Tremblay (harmonica and singing – the Quebecois can rock the blues specially good) Maxi Kabutz (playing his Roland electronic drum kit; this lad is only 13 years old and he is good) Simone Barbieri (lending his support as groupie. AS Roma Me – Peter Pilgrim (playing acoustic – I am so rusty out of the saddle)
This recording took place on the last day of the course, Thursday 15th, we all stayed at the Kabutz family household and enjoyed a fabulous barbecue. We found out that we are all musicians of some type!
PS: Special shout-out and thank you to Simone Barbieri for taking my humble iPhone 3GS and making the video recording!
This article is sponsored by TLC Powertalk and written by Peter Pilgrim
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If you have one member in a SCRUM team that is not an effective communicator than your team is performing sub optimally.
The benefits of good communication are important to todays software developers, designers and architects. If you look at the world of business you will find that almost all job specifications and advertisements require a degree of communication ability. Technology is not a panacea.
Let us think about that dirty word “Agile” that some people are upset about the over-usage these days. Agile is the ability for the software development process to have a feedback mechanism for the ultimate users of the product that we as engineers are creating. In any control system with a feedback one can think of an interaction. If we are people in the software business need to interact, then it stands to reason, we need to able to communicate.
Pair Programming / Code Reviewing Sessions
In order to pair-program effectively, we need to use all of our senses: listening (audio receiver) and talking (audio sender), reading and writing (visual sense), and also discuss the objectives of the code (feelings), and for the majority of our time put away our emotions when as individuals we do not agree with the code as where we would have like to write it. In other words pairing requires individuals to work and communicate as a team. There is a team goal and that is the delivery the best quality software to the stakeholder. Developers need effective communication in order to efficiently work in a self-organised team. If you have one member in a SCRUM team that is not an effective communicator than your team is performing sub optimally.
Let us take the daily stand-up or sit-down. If the SCRUM master is not disciplined enough with the team, or rather the team is not self organised enough, then it is possible for the meeting to drag on longer than 15-20 minutes, because members of the team add different items to the agenda.
When the communication is poor in a SCRUM team, then you can be sure that the velocity is going to be affected. The evidence will show as the team will be slow to build to trust and self-esteem in the team itself. If the team is pairing then it could be worse, because much like professional football teams there is no gelling in the team. There will be a lower awareness of the big picture of the project. Concentration of the team will dip in and out on a day-by-day basis. It will take longer time to develop software in a high enough quality that the product owner ( if he or she remain loyal to the team) will accept the requirement as being done. And of course, given the state of the software, whether it shipped or in UAT lifecycle, there will be more bugs and errors. Burn-down of the overall product backlog will be approaching flat. Effective communication inside the team at least provide knowledge share and the chance that team can improve whereas in non-communicating team this possibility is zero.
Presentations
In speaking to an audience during a presentation, we need to be able to communicate effectively in these situations as well. Presenters must capture the mood, the profile the audience, the occasion and the environment. The presenters need to write an abstract, design the content and if necessary write the demos. Finally, there is the whole aspect of delivery. Communication is extremely important for presentations. It can make the difference between you and your performance being reported back to the management as a damp squib or as a rousing rockstar.
If you are working in global team, where there are separate sub teams working together in different time zones around the planet, then having good communication and delivery is very important. If you cannot communicate the ideas of about the software changes, change order requests or the bug tickets, then there is risk of the software quality decreasing rapidly and that the delivery of the project being late or misunderstood or both, because different located teams have differing perceptions of the entire whole picture.
Interviews and Informal Chats
Going for a interview today or tomorrow? In job interviews you are nowadays assessed on your cultural fit into the business.How well you answer competency questions and how you perform? How does one prepares beforehand? How do you write your elevator pitch? Candidates must know how to answer questions from the interview, as well as knowing the essentials of body language and building rapport. Communication is important here.
Let us switch tables, now suppose you are the interviewer. Do you get frustrated by the way you ask what seem to be perfectly valid questions and the candidates are confused? Perhaps it has to do with your body language. Could it be that you are too competitive? Perhaps your body language could be changed so that the candidates feels that you are approachable and open to a conversation? In a hard economic climate, it perhaps does not matter too much that interviewing technique is not too perfect, but what happens in the boom times or when they will return. Finding the correct and suitable culture may have to a lot to do with with the way you communicate to the prospective top talent that you hope to persuade to join or contract into your firm.
Development Leaders
Being a development leader, whether technical or team lead, is all about having good communication. How do you motivate a team? Do you understand what to do when a team member is not making the grade? Or on the other hand what if you have an outstanding individual in your team, how do you keep them interested and running in the long game? How do raise your game? How can you lead by example if you have a lack of confidence about being vocal yourself? Do you listen to issues when members of your team raise them or do you have the habit of dropping the ball? Are you approachable or indifferent? How well do listen both upstream and downstream levels of authority? And do you have the respect of your team? How do you resolve conflict?
As you can see above, software development today has become increasing people-oriented over the decades. The computer whizz kids of yesteryear have given way to digital social literature members of society, in the work place and communal living. There is no longer acceptance for communication ineptitude in the commercial world.
Communication is also down to your way to approach digital media. Do you respond effectively to call to actions? What is your response time to an email request?
In a nutshell, if you want get on, then you need to have good communication skills and it does not matter whether you are an engineer or a manager. For a software developers, communications is the giving, receiving, sharing of a ideas, knowledge and feelings about a software application, a website, module or automated system – and most importantly about the effects of those systems on people who must operate with them on a daily basis. The value of communication is key.
You have probably guessed correctly. That’s right! I will be making a personal appearance at Skills Matter tomorrow for Cuke-Up, which is the one day conference about Cucumber BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) tool.
Well the answer is that many of Ruby’s goodness including RSpec have made their way into Scala world. Bill Venner’s ScalaTest in one framework influenced by RSpec.
In the Groovy land they reports of people invoke the WebDriver to execute step definitions. Also the Cucumber website looks awesome, man!
Something tells me that learning some ideas of Ruby might be useful later when I look and play around Mirah.
Finally, I am at liberty, justice and peace.
Learning Behaviour Driven Development from the horse’s mouth, or a very leading edge person, like Aslak Hellesøy is a no-brainer. There might be still tickets available so hurry. See you there.
The market is dead. The brief flurry of activity in January and February is at an end. There is truly not a lot going on out there.
I seem to have attracted some haters out there. Because I have been pushing Beyond Java, looking at innovation beyond Java the programming language, many folk seem to be upset about this. The next time you see me, please feel free, if you want to cross the street and walk on the other side of the road. I see you though. Of course I can see you creeping and scurrying in the dark alleys of tech town. I simply do not have time for minds full of hate. However you have a right to choose hate for your heart. It is sad, but true.
Here is the news: Innovation will be happening whether you like it or not. You may not be agreeable to it, or it might actually believe that Beyond Java is too risky for you or you cannot afford it now. This moving feast is happening and it is on the road. Tough.
Today, I feel humbled to experience another QCon London conference. It is the fourth time I have been involved, and I consider it the biggest event in my home town.
What were my favourite events and happenings at QCon?
Meeting with the people and having inspired conservations about technology
Meeting Wendy Devolder of SkillsMatter and discussing the Functional Exchange
The Java Community Panel on Thursday afternoon with Stephen Colebourne, Ben Alex, Mark Little, Jerome Dochez and Patrick Curran.
Twitter conversation with Alex Blewitt about the JCP, the future of Java
Mark Powell’s evening key note on the Jet Propulsion Lab, which contains many Star Trek references
Speaker’s dinner where I tabled with Mark Powell, Glenn Vanderburg and Kevin Henney and had a fantastic conversation about The Mote in God’s Eye and science fiction writers, TV, movies and books
The speaker dinner’s at the restaurant Inn The Park
Meeting individuals like Christian Kellner and Daniel Temme of TimoCom, Duesseldorf, Germany; Juan Germano of Core Security from Argentina; Gary Harvey of Trifork;
Winning an Amazon Kindle 3 Wi-Fi bundle in a FuseSource prize drive!!! (Thanks to Matt Thayer)
Being asked questions about JCP, Future of Java
Paul Albettele asked me about the future of Java / Scala. Should I learn Scala? Should I learn functional programming? Michael Klove also inquired about Scala’s future too
Chatting with Googler Ade Oshineye and eavesdropping on his photograph tips to a fellow conference goer
Meeting Simon Ritter on the Oracle booth and discussing the JavaFX 2.0 early access release and experiments there of
Meeting Artifactory / JFrog folk again Yoav Landman, Shlomi Ben-haim and Talin, et al
The things I enjoyed about this year’s open space conference.
Just the enthusiasm and the luck of the draw about being there again.
It was heart warming and uplifting to be part of the action
Meeting this year’s new people
Getting reacquainted with the previous JPR11 attendees
Diane Marsh’s Scala Koans
Sitting on Bruce Eckel’s easy massaging chair again and meeting Bruce again
Making a video recording of the closing session
Having the time to make screen cast of JavaFX 2.0 EA
Kate Ice House
The Progressive Dinner
Doing a Technical Leadership session
4 half days snowboarding
The things I regret about JPR11
I did not meet and greet every single individual
Missing the Make It Fast technical session
Missing my own Future of Client Java session
Not getting the Saturday flight for an extra snowboarding Sunday
Not knowing if I can make it back next year, and not having that ideal Job / Position
Enjoy the Flickr Stream
So heart warming. Thank you all participants at the Java Posse Round Up 2011. Everyone was great there. My heart swells with pride. It was an unbelievable and unmissable.
Advanced Java EE development in financial services, London. Building on Scala, JavaFX, and Groovy technologies for Enterprise businesses that innovate and require exclusive services
TLC Powertalk Presentation Training, 121 Communication Courses, Personal Impact, Speaker, NLP Skills
"Thank you so much for the training that you have provided for me and members of my team. You are a master of removing people from their comfort zone and enabling them to explore their potential. Those that have attended so far have thoroughly enjoyed the experience whilst leaving with a number of tools that will be invaluable in their work environment." Chris Forrest, Director, Microsoft, UK
Conferences and Events
I am speaking at:
ACCU 2013 Conference, Bristol, UK
Tuesday 9th -Saturday 13th, April, 2013, Bristol, UK
Talk: Taking Scala into the Enterprise
Talk: Test Driven Development with Java EE 7, Arquillian and Enterprise Containers
