Software Craftsmanship In Israel Events Feed

Meeting 13: Lightening Talks

- During this meeting we will have 4 short and very focused tech talks (max 10min each).

- The talks will cover:

API Best Practices
Caching Layer - When and How?
Scalable Data Mining - Mahout
Architecting non functional requirements

- After the talks the group will be encouraged to mingle, to discuss the ideas and to share their experiences in a fishbowl style

Meeting 12: Code Retreat II

Corey Haines is a Journeyman who went for an year of pair-programming tour. Corey is highly involved with the Software Craftsmanship movement and is a frequent speaker on various conferences on the matters of code quality, skills and professionalism.

Corey has conducted many code retreats around the world :) and this is his first visit (surely not the last one:) ) to Israel.

Code retreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take a part in focused practice, away from the pressures of "getting things done", the code retreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

Meeting 11: Code Retreat I

Meeting 10: Hosting Corey Haines

Corey Haines is a Journeyman who went for an year of pair-programming tour.
Corey is highly involved with the Software Craftsmanship movement and is a frequent speaker on various conferences on the matters of code quality, skills and professionalism.
Corey has conducted many code retreats around the world :) and this is his first visit (surely not the last one:) ) to Israel.
Code retreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software developement and design.
By providing developers the opportunity to take a part in focused practice, away from the pressures of "getting things done", the code retreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement.
Practicing the basic principles of modular and object oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

Meeting 9: Open Panel

SW Development - Nobody tells you what the cool kids already know!

This time we will gather in order to discuss different facets of software development, like: architecture, development principles and practices.
These topics will be introduced and discussed in an open panel environment where various experts will share their experiences, opinions and honest answers.
Aside from the questions by the moderator, the panel will answer the questions from the audience, thus creating a unique opportunity to learn from the experts’ experiences.

Part I:
Open Panel Discussion - Experts sharing their experiences on SW development in Practice
Part II:
Short Code Kata - if the time permits we will focus on a simple code Kata based on the Jeff Bay's essay titled "Object Calisthenics".

The panel participants:

Ran Tavori
Ran Tavory for dummies: a father, husband and software geek.
Loves frontends but has no sense of aesthetics; Loves backends but not crons.
A full stack developer with interests ranging from web interfaces, iOS, nosql, web infrastructure and scaling, deployment automation, programming languages, open source enthusiast (a of several projects). A blogger, a podcaster and a software craftsman.

Developer and cofounder at invi.com

Lior Schejter
Though Lior has worked for start-ups and medium companies, the majority of his professional life he spent at SAP.
As leading software architect on SAP's River project - an on-demand application development and hosting platform, Lior has interesting insights and vast experience on software architecture and development.
Lior has graduated with honors from the Technion and he's currently studying towards his M.Sc. in CS, specializing in parallel and distributed graph mining.

You can read more about Lior here: http://claimid.com/slior

Elad Sofer
Eladis first and foremost a SW engineer; Several years ago he was infected with the agile virus and has not been able to “shake the disease” ever since. He is now traveling across the IT industry with a mission to infect other people.He is now helping software projects, teams and organizations, varying from small to big, from lightweight startups to government Offices in Israel.
Elad is the owner of a popular blog in Hebrew about Developing s/w in an Agile world.

You can read more about him and what he thinks in his blog: http://blog.thescrumster.com/

Meeting 8: The Code Room

I am happy to announce the first Software Craftsmanship in Israel Code Room event to be held in Google Israel which kindly volunteered to host us. (Many thanks!)

The Code Room
Have you ever wanted to code with the bests of the bests?
Have you ever wanted to learn from the real professionals how to choose the right architectures & designs?
Have you ever wanted to rub your elbows with the great developers?
Now you have the chance!
The code room meeting is all about coding a small project together.
The purpose is to enrich the participants with different programming approaches and styles (architecture, design, clean code, unit testing and etc...).

Meeting 7: How to utilize efficiently Programming Languages?

- Dynamic languages seem to be more concise and less verbose than their Static counterparts. However, using Dynamic languages efficiently requires a different approach. During the first part of our meeting Reuven Lerner will demonstrate the differences between Dynamic and Static languages and present the right approaches to utilize the full power of a Dynamic language.

- While general purpose languages can solve any problem, the creation of special-purpose languages for expressing problems and solving a particular problem domain is highly efficient. During the second part of our meeting Dror Helper will explain and demonstrate what are Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) and how they can be used to solve problems in a particular domain.

Hands On:
In the hands on part we will exercise writing DSLs.

Giveaways:
We have great giveaways to give during the meeting. DON'T miss them :) Food: Although we are plaining to have basic food, please also bring something with you for the group. (Thus we will be able to support the event with the user generated food).

Meeting 6: Refactoring Workshop

Our six meeting will deal with a Software Engineering technique called: "Refactoring".
This is one of my favorite techniques, which is usually misunderstood and overlooked (e.g. Refactoring != Rewriting).

We will refactor several real life examples in pairs (or triples). Also, we will be demonstrated with the techniques to create a better code.

Giveaways:
We have great giveaways to give during the meeting. DON'T miss them :)

Food:
Although we are plaining to have basic food, please also bring something with you for the group.
(Thus we will be able to support the event with the user generated food).

Meeting 5: All you need is Code

Our 5th meet-up is rolling out (on 15.12.2010) and I am very excited as this time there are plenty of surprises :)

First, we have a lot of cool giveaways to give during the meet-up (A hint is here).
Second, the meet-up's title is: “All you need is… Code” and its format is slightly different:
We are going to discuss different SW principles: DRY, TDD, Code Reviews and etc...
The demonstrations will be done in 3-4 different groups. Each group will discuss a different SW principle.
Each 30 min, after sounding some music the participants will exchange their groups.

Each principle will be demonstrated either by doing pair programming/kata or by a code demonstration.
We are going to cover the following topics*:

DRY
TDD
Code Reviews in Practice

Remarks:
* Please bring your laptops (with the environments set-up) to the meeting.
** Code Reviews group will provide an option to review YOUR code...
Together we will review participants' code, identify code smells and provide solutions for cleaner and better implementation...
Please don't hesitate to bring your code base with you...

Giveaways:
We have great giveaways to give during the meeting. DON'T miss them :)

Food:
Though, we are plaining to provide food - you are more than welcome to bring more food for the benefit of all (user generated food).

Meeting 4: Code Reviews / Legacy Code

During this meeting we will introduce Mentorship/Apprenticeship program.
(See the links section for more details)

The lectures section will touch some techniques to deal with legacy code and unit tests as well as how to conduct effective code reviews.

Meeting 3: Applying Unit Tests on Existing Code

This time we will gather to learn how to apply unit tests on existing code base, while emphasizing the following principles:
Context Based Design, DRY, KISS and SOLID.

Meeting 2: Bad/Good Code

During this meeting we will review examples of bad and good code.
Looking at the examples will help us to understand how to write more clean, readable and maintainable code in the future.

Meeting 1: Introduction to Software Craftsmanship in Israel Group

I am pleased to announce that we are planning to have our fist “Software Craftsmanship in Israel” group meeting on Wednesday, May 26th.

Who should attend?
Everybody who cares about Software Development as a Professional.
You are welcome to pass this announcement onto anyone you think may be interested.

Does the meeting require any knowledge of a specific technology?
NO. NONE. ZIPPO.
The sole purpose of “Software Craftsmanship” is to improve our skills in Software Engineering and Development and it doesn’t require any particular technological knowledge.
The examples, tutorials and hands-on exercises may be done using .NET, Java, Python, Ruby and whatever technology you would like to use.
Members will be encouraged to pair up with someone they have not worked with before, thus enhancing their perspective and knowledge.
If you have a laptop with your environments set-up, you are most welcome to bring it to the meetings.

How much does it cost?
Absolutely nothing, the event is free and open for everybody’s participation.