Codecamp_Timisoara 2024

We have a difficult relationship with time. Although we and everything we create experience time, it does not mean we are good at applying our experience. We can be poor at learning the lessons of the past, and we often have an unreasonable belief that we can tell what the future will bring. Design guidelines can often be naïve — “Make everything extensible!”, “Future-proof your architecture!” — or contradictory — “Make your code easy to modify!”, “Close your code to modification!” — and are often framed as simple principles independent of context-dependent considerations. Whether you are approaching your codebase as a junior programmer or as a senior architect, the changes and uncertainty that time brings can be frustrating and surprising.

This talk will not allow you to predict the future or apply all the lessons the past can teach, but it will raise your awareness and your knowledge of how to deal with uncertainty, how to see and respond to change, how to keep your options open and how to understand the effects of time on your software architecture.

In the realm of healthcare technology, the development of Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) presents unique challenges and opportunities. This session will explore the intricacies of Project Management and System Integration in the context of SaMD. From conception to deployment, attendees will gain insights into the critical aspects of managing projects for Medical Software, including Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, and Quality Assurance.

We will delve into the complexities of integrating software with medical devices and systems, ensuring seamless interoperability and functionality.

Join us as we unravel the intricacies of Project Management and System Integration for SaMD, empowering you to lead successful initiatives in the rapidly evolving field of healthcare technology.

The world is on fire! None of our software development efforts will matter at all if we do not change the course of the climate crisis. The software lifecycle also causes direct and indirect CO2 emissions: it leaves a footprint and exacerbates environmental problems.

However, the environmental aspect is not the only one we need to focus on. If we take our responsibility seriously, we have to look at software development holistically in the sense of the so-called triple bottom line from all three sustainability perspectives: social, economic, and ecological. On the one hand, sustainability is a necessity in the current crisis, and, on the other hand, it is increasingly a key factor that determines the success of companies, both in the search for talent and for customers and markets. So, it’s time to understand to what extent software development can help take this holistic perspective and at the same time achieve higher software productivity through more sustainability.

Sometimes when you’re working on software it feels as if you all know what everyone else is thinking. Decisions get made and code gets written and it doesn’t surprise you at all. It’s exactly the same as if you wrote it yourself. You might not have appreciated it at the time, but you felt it. You had minimal viable alignment.

Far more likely you are experiencing insufficient alignment. Half your day is spent in meetings fighting for what you think is right and against other “autonomous” teams. The other half is spent struggling against cognitive overload to deliver a feature which, at best, doesn’t make things any worse.

“Just enough” alignment is essential not just for high quality software which can be delivered with ease, it’s also key to your experience of work. But how might you achieve it?

In this talk I’ll describe the various sources of alignment, how you might find out how much alignment you and your colleagues need, and how to achieve it. As a result you’ll return to the day job, prepared to make life better, not just for yourself but for everyone around you.

Several years ago I Tweeted that unless a coder regarded their program as a work of art to be carefully crafted as a thing of beauty, they could not truly call themselves a programming professional. I was branded as a gatekeeper and an egotist. Yet in earlier days many programmers cared about beauty. It’s easy to discount the contemporary reaction as owing to Millennial culture and values — and yet there are potentially deeper explanations.

While computer hardware such as RAM, disk storage and processor speed have all advanced about four orders of magnitude, the technology of programming has been about the same for 50 years. Many of the changes we see today owe to changes in social values and culture. Minimalism, planning and pride of ownership have given way to unaccounted growth, agility and team-enabled anonymity.

Yet some still program with pride. This talk explores why that makes a difference, and what you might consider trying to graduate from a programmer, to a software engineer, and ultimately a master of the fine art of programming.