No Fluff Just Stuff
The day started curiously as I was waiting for the 57, where I came across a quaint wannabe bus driver from Somalia. Naturally, I asked him why he had opted for life over here in Canada. “Here the supermarkets don’t sell bullets side by side with the vegetables”, was his honest reply. I never did get his name, but he did manage to leave an impression.
Anyhow, arriving at the square dusky-coloured Delta hotel, Barbie presented me with my name tag for this year’s No Fluff Just Stuff Western Canada Software Symposium. I inquired if it wasn’t necessary to register, at which she bluntly retaliated, “Are you lying about having paid? Well, you look like a honest guy, but nice of you to ask!”. Charming.
Scott Davis kicked off the show, and before we knew it, he had bewildered us Java techies with some Groovy magic. As his finale, he had Grails spooning off a fully-CRUD enabled web app in a split-second jiffy. Admittedly Grails does hit that sweet spot, which no doubt will have me succumbing to its allure, yet one growing pet peeve I have with it is that it does come with shackles of its own. For one, it imposes its own build tool, namely gant. But since, for better or for worse, most of us use maven as our build tool of choice, i would cast an early warning to the coders behind Grails – choice is key.
Thus, and surprisingly so, the much talked about shiny new toy didn’t earn my first merit, instead the honour went to a talk on Agile testing strategies. Jared, a likable confectionery-throwing speaker, not only talked a good talk, he also walked the walk. Test Driven Development (TDD) is a notion that has been much paraded about on the Agile front, yet until now I have remained skeptical. Until now, I didn’t fully take on board what its potential benefits could be. Enlightened, I now realize that by using TDD this has the knock on effect of it driving the design, hence driving the developer in keeping the code testable, which in turn keeps it simple, modular, and loosely-coupled. Genius.
And with that, I will finish off Day 1 with the quote of the day:
“I can’t fix stupid” ~Jared Richardson’s take on dumb developers.
