Neal Ford
Neal Ford is Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, video/DVD presentations, and author and/or editor of 5 books spanning a variety of technologies. He focuses on designing and building of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, speaking at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks.
Check out his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at .
Track abstract - Room K1 - Software Development Leaders
Agile.next
Agile has matured to the point of mainstream success. Even large companies have discovered that it helps them build better quality software faster. But the agile practices that are mainstream today have been around for a long time. What is the next wave of innovation in the Agile world going to bring?
This presentation focuses on what I and others see as the next interesting things to push Agile to the next level. This session discusses Behavior Driven Development & Cucumber, Continuous Delivery, and Agile Version Control Strategies, all in great depth. This session will jump-start the thinking for mature agile organizations and provide new ideas for those just starting.
Track abstract - Room G4 - Emerging Technologies
Functional Thinking
Learning the syntax of a new language is easy, but learning to think under a different paradigm is hard. This session helps you transition from a Java writing imperative programmer to a functional programmer, using Java, Clojure and Scala for examples. This session takes common topics from imperative languages and looks at alternative ways of solving those problems in functional languages. As a Java developer, you know how to achieve code-reuse via mechanisms like inheritance and polymorphism. Code reuse is possible in functional langauges as well, using high-order functions, composition, and multi-methods. I take a variety of common practices in OOP languages and show the corresponding mechanisms in functional languages. Expect your mind to be bent, but you'll leave with a much better understanding of both the syntax and semantics of functional languages.
Track abstract - Room G1 - Developer effectiveness
External DSLs
When building a Domain Specific Language, the first choice you must make is whether it should be internal or external. Most of the recent focus on DSLs has been on the internal variety, but there are compelling use cases for external DSLs as well, expecially considering how good the tools have gotten for building them. This session covers a wide range of topics about external DSLs, including comparing delimeter directed and syntax directed translation, a bit about BNF and language grammars, recursive descent parsing, parser combinators, embedded translation and interpretation, and other topics. Attendees to this session will leave understanding the major issues and opportunities with external DSLs and how to build their own languages.
