Giants are made by standing on the shoulders of dwarves.... lots of them

A lightning talk given in May 2013 when I was in London anyway and thought I'd pop along to a user group. Basically a good system/developer uses many tools to get her/his work done. These small tools then make the developer better and able to build better software.

The 'PDF Export' of this talk has had a bit of trouble - so if you want to see the talk I really recommend viewing it properly on
http://www.theonlystephen.com/talk-giants-are-made-from-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-dwarves....lots-of-them/

Transcript

1. GIANTS ARE MADE BY
   STANDING
   ON THE SHOULDERS OF DWARVES...
   ...LOTS OF THEM
   Created by /
   Stephen McCullough @swmcc
   

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2. .... AND I MEAN LOTS!
   

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3. "A practise of developing by understanding and
   building on the research and works created by
   others"
   

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4. FRAMEWORKS
   RUBY ON RAILS
   SINATRA
   EXPRESS
   DJANGO
   ZEND
   

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5. SITES
   BASECAMP/CAMPIRE AKA 37SIGNALS
   GITHUB
   TWITTER
   FUNDRY
   HOUSETRIP
   

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6. DEVELOPERS?
   I firmly believe that good/happy developers can
   use this process as well.
   

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7. PROCESSES (THE DRAWVES)
   Processes, in my opinon seperate the
   good/happy developers from the bad/unhappy
   ones.
   WHAT IS A PROCESS?
   A process is simply a serious of steps you do to
   complete a given task. One task - one process. It
   should simply be a discipline you adpot in order
   to make your life easier.
   

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8. EXAMPLES
   They shouldn't be restricted by just being 'tools'
   (IDE's or frameworks). It should incorporate the
   following:
   Fundamental Principles (TDD, Reviewing)
   Workflow
   Time Management
   Estimation
   Collaboration
   

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9. TOOLS
   GIT
   More than just a source control package.
   Improves workflow and eases in communication
   between team members.
   IDE
   I don't use one. I flip between macvim, vim and
   Sublime Text 2 depending on my mood.
   DOTFILES
   - if you are
   interested...
   Taking screen shots
   Copying a file to my clipboard
   Logging onto environments
   Restarting servers/deamons
   https://github.com/swmcc/dotfiles
   

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10. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
    TDD
    TDD - 80% of the time
    In my opinon - its a waste of time to have 100%
    coverage, usually.
    THE 'ALMOST CERTAIN PRINCIPLE'
    Confidence
    Infection Rate
    Bravery
    First thing I do when looking at new code is
    (after the README) is look at the tests. Test
    code doesn't lie.. Note I said code not tests ;)
    

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11. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
    TIME MANAGEMENT
    "In the zone" programming is (in my opinon)
    good if you have good processes to catch you
    out when you do something daft. Coding is a
    highly CREATIVE activity, if done right. If you
    live in a good eco system you can go "in the
    zone" without fear.
    WORK FLOW
    Not just confined to your work.
    PLAY TIME
    Play time can be productive. One to two hours
    on a Friday morning I try and improve
    something that annoyed me this week. I keep a
    file somewhere of the annoying things I have or
    want to learn and try and incorporate that into
    my workflow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
    doesn't - main thing is that I learn from it.
    Doing new things in your own time leads to
    other things - for instance I am doing a talk on
    neo4j to Belfast Ruby soon.
    

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12. CRAFTMANSHIP
    WE ARE CREATIVE DAMMIT!
    I feel privileged to be able code and build
    something from nothing. I could talk about the
    any one of the previous topics at length. I love
    processes.
    I read somewhere (can't remember so typing it
    out from my head):
    "You can teach the theory behind programming
    but you can't teach the discipline, practises and
    skills of it. These things are aquired through
    maturity, practise and mentoring..."
    To me that's what the 'dwarves' represent. They
    are stacked high to enable us to deliver better
    software so then we can build better code and
    enable us to build better applications/sites.
    

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13. FIN
    

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