Codemash : Tech Trends and Pwning Your Pwn Career KPD – 11614

Here’s what we’re going to do  I’m going to talk about what I heard and know  I’m going to talk about why I think that’s relevant to you  (that’s what all presentations should be, I think)  Disclaimer: I’m not talking official Calamos Canon. I’m off the cuff here. And maybe a little off the reservation.

Emergence  Keynote  Systems of complexity  Snowflakes are constructed with emergence – out of the physics of water and randomness – 14 different stable states of ice.  Complex systems are all built on top of a scaffold that sets the rules, but enables organic growth

How is emergence relevant to us?  The complex system of the office  Behavior emerges from the core and very simple rules of operation  When looking at the situation around you, be aware of the simple rules that create that situation. If you don’t like the situation, change the rules, the scaffold, not the situation  Don’t rigidly architect systems, put simple rules in place and allow them to organically grow

Future of C#  Roslyn is coming (you know about Roslyn, right?)  No huge paradigm shifts in C# 6  Will be released with a future version of Visual Studio  Lots of new syntactic sugar  Pulling in features and keeping competitive with Java 8

What does that mean to us?  At the moment, nothing.  Well, it’s something cool to have a look at and know is coming  Also, it means that MS continues to support our tool of choice and is keeping it fresh and relevant

Hadoop and big data  Hadoop is a Map/Reduce solution  Runs on Microsoft platform, both locally and in Azure  Perf scales linearly with N machines  Should be a 15 minute job to get Hadoop running on your machine with an emulator  Two choices  HD Insight emulator (and as a NuGet package)  Horton data platform

What does this mean for us?  This solution is useful anywhere we have lots of independent calculations that take a lot of time to calculate  Risk analysis, future projects, even security or company calculations would all be good candidates.

Blablascript  Javascript is still the belle of the tech ball  Can be done simply (know your basics)  Can be done SOLIDly (know your advance-ics)  Can be tested (know your frameworks)  Can be wrapped (know your TypeScript (or CoffeeScript))

What do I need to know about JS usage?  Richer client side applications demand more JavaScript  Node.js is becoming ever more popular. JS is really a first class language for development  Even if you use JS libraries, it’s still key to know the basics  Javascript, the good parts is constantly referenced – might be worth a read  Angular.js is the king of the mountain for JS presentation frameworks, although if you’re considering KnockoutJS, Durandal is a strong competitor to Angular and uses KOJS under the covers.  jQuery still very much in favor  Type/Coffeescript still very much in favor

Architecture  “Anyone can design a bridge that stands. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands”  “The point of programming is making money”  “Simplicity: maximize the amount of work not done”  “MVP: Minimum viable product”

What does that mean to us?  No “one true way” to set up projects  No “one true way” to pick tools  Talk with your architect and rapidly size/spec the project based on need  Iterate  Use the scaffolding provided, let beauty emerge

Softer stuff

Independence  Being independent isn’t that much different  Thinking independently is a good thing  Many technology people are unhappy in their positions  Corporate politics  Project ebb and flow  Maintenance

How are you affected by independence?  Industry changing  Happiness is achievable  You can be not a pawn and actually be more secure  Independence doesn’t necessarily mean going it alone – it’s about owning your own career and destiny  “Don’t argue with stupid; be more awesome”

Remote  A big part of independence  Unbelievable how many tech folks are % remote  Like, literally, I could not believe what I was hearing  Corporate IT  Consulting  Independent  Some detractions  Pairing is difficult – mitigation: ScreenHero  Social, isolation – mitigation: team culture and lots of f2f IM/chat

What does remote mean to us?  It’s a reasonable request to your manager/company  Remote work is primarily a trust issue  Productivity metrics > butt in seat management  JIRA is coming; having real metrics may enable better remote trust

Summary  Lots of great stuff on the web front  Lots of talk of SOLID principles and testing  Lots of discussions about independence and freedom of thought for developers  Lots of open positions out there. Companies are not looking for good people at this point. Some of them are looking for good groups or teams of people.  New tech? High demand? This is a great time to be a developer.