Extreme Programming Club

Scala, Lift and the future of club's webiste

2008-08-15T16:03:00.003Z

Guys,

FIRSTLY: if you have attended our last meeting, or would like to join our new mailing list and take a part in a prize draw, please sing-up to the list or send me an email me at work. The prize drawn every month is a personal license to one of the product by JetBrains, as they are our new club sponsor.

Now few details about Scala:
Here is the official Scala's website, where you will find documentation (nice PDFs by the language author - Martin Odersky), and the latest builds.
For the .NET community, here are two(1,2) links explaining ho to run/use Scala on the .NET platform
Then have a look at the Scala's web framework called Lift.

The details of the source control server are still to follow.

Thank you!

Next meeting is all about XP Club's New Website

2008-08-12T11:18:00.006Z

On Wednesday, 13th of August at our usual place we are going to discuss our new website communally developed by the club members. We are going to do it in a proper Agile way with the backlog of user stories, short iterations, product owner and so on.

Our development team (us) have decided to use Scala and its web framework called Lift.

Lift claims to be as easy as Ruby On Rails, yet offering better performance, easiest Ajax integration, ORM support, and security out of the box, so we are all excited about the future work in such environment.

Scala runs on both JVM and Microsoft's CLR, so we can accommodate more of developers out there.

On our next meeting we are going to decide on the set of requirements and potentially divide them into more manageable chunks/stories and we will also try to present the development environment based on Linux machine, using JVM and Eclipse.

Also we are going to try supposedly simple testing problem brought to our attention by one of the club members Ralph Williams and in general have a nice and relaxed networking social event.

XP Practices: Refactorig, branching and merging. Joys and Pains.

2008-07-07T12:48:00.008Z

At our next meeting (on the 9th of July at 7pm, in Victoria Hotel Pub) we are going to have a moderated debate about various specific eXtreme Programming practices, like refactoring, branching, merging, and possibly more...

If you have any views on those or you have no views at all but would like to hear, what IT practitioners think of those, please come along.

We'll do our best to provide you with a drink and a snack.

2008-06-08T17:49:00.002Z

Exploring Mobile Web Development

Chris Mills of Opera on Wednesday, the 11th of June at our usual place (Victoria Hotel Pub in Leeds), will deliver a presentation on the basics of mobile web development - what you need to think about in terms of device limitations, browser variance, and how you can look towards creating single web sites that will work well on both desktop and mobile browsers.

After the presentation we are staying in the pub to enjoy the networking and the odd glass of a beverage.

About the speaker:

Chris Mills is a developer relations manager for Opera - he edits and publishes articles on dev.opera.com and labs.opera.com, liaises with the community to raise awareness of Opera and collect feedback, and evangelises about Opera software wherever he can.

Find Chris' blog on My Opera.

Outside of work, he is an extremely avid music fan, enjoying playing and listening to a wide variety of music, including metal, folk, punk, electronica, prog, and more. His main band at the moment is the mighty - Conquest of Steel.

We'll do our best to provide you with a drink and a snack.

Change of Plans: Exploring Mobile Web Development

2008-04-21T07:30:00.006Z

Unfortunately due to a bug circulating in and around Bradford, Chris Mills is unable to give us the talk tonight on Mobile Web Development. We are moving his talk to June, so now officially the talk on Mobile Web Development is going to happen on the 11th of June (second Wednesday as usual) at 7pm at the usual place - Victoria Hotel Pub.

Tonight instead of the talk, we are having a Computing Pub Quiz. The winning team of 4 will receive interesting prize(s), which we are still deciding on. Bring your clever friends, people with quirky computing knowledge spanning across decades, and you might find yourself winning some cool and geeky stuff.

Drinks are on us and fun is on everyone.

Presentation moved to 11th of June:

Chris Mills of Opera will deliver a presentation on the basics of mobile web development - what you need to think about in terms of device limitations, browser variance, and how you can look towards creating single web sites that will work well on both desktop and mobile browsers.

After the presentation we are staying in the pub to enjoy the networking and the odd glass of a beverage.

About the speaker:

Chris Mills is a developer relations manager for Opera - he edits and publishes articles on dev.opera.com and labs.opera.com, liaises with the community to raise awareness of Opera and collect feedback, and evangelises about Opera software wherever he can.

Find Chris' blog on My Opera.

Outside of work, he is an extremely avid music fan, enjoying playing and listening to a wide variety of music, including metal, folk, punk, electronica, prog, and more. His main band at the moment is the mighty - Conquest of Steel

We are also happy to announce that AGAIN we will be able to buy a pint of any drink from the bar for the first 25 people.

Next Meeting: The Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

2008-04-03T08:16:00.002Z

On 9th of April (Wednesday as usual) at the Victoria Hotel Pub in Leeds at 7pm we are meeting to discus The Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering. There is no set agenda; we will just try to gently moderate the discussion, so that it revolves around the software industry topics.

The idea for the meeting came from this article on www.codinghorror.com

The article itself describes the book titled exactly The Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering.

You can treat the codinghorror article as a good prerequisite to the meeting.

We are also happy to announce that we will be able to buy a pint of any drink from the bar for the first 25 people.

'Continuous Integration' webcast

2008-03-26T21:37:00.007Z

Here is the Flash webcast of 'Continuous Integration' session I did a couple of weeks ago.

'Continuous Integration' cont.

2008-03-14T09:40:00.005Z

After Richard's really good presentation in Bradford last Wednesday (screencast to be uploaded soon, so watch this space) and a really good networking session that spanned from Black Marble offices to The Fighting Cock I would like to keep the thread going. There were some really good thoughts floating by the glasses of cloudy ales that evening and maybe asking wider community and their experience with Continuous Integration will spread the knowledge even further. So please come forward and share your views.

I would like to post my thesis, just to bootstrap the thread:
Would it not be so much easier for everyone, if all tests had to run prior to committing any code into the source management. This would kill off (i.e. speed up) the following loop:

whack some code > run all tests (OR not) > commit > wait for CI to do the build > when green move on, when red come back to code and fix it OR move on and pretend it wasn't you

Such a barrier would put an imperative on every developer to fix all the issues with their code, before they could even dream of committing. It would also mean that the bad code would be fixed by the perpetrators, leading to better practices across the organization. It seams like one of those small changes to the system, that would make huge difference.

Any thoughts on that or anything related to CI, please write them up folks!

And below is Roy Osherove singing about this issue:

March 12th Meeting -'But it works on my PC' or Continuous Integration to improve quality

2008-03-03T18:17:00.003Z

How many times have you heard the developer say "but it works on my PC" ?

How much time have you wasted trying to get a complex solution to build on a new PC?

In this presentation Richard Fennell will show how continuous integration, the automated building and testing of projects whenever files are checked in, can be used to improve the quality of any software development project. Helping to catch and resolve problems as soon as possible in the development cycle; not waiting until to delivery phase of a project to find there are integration problems.

The presentation will include demos of continuous integration using Cruise Control .NET and Visual Studio Team Server, as well as discussions of integration with other system such as NUnit, MSTest and Virtual Server

NOTE: This meeting is NOT a the usual location in Leeds, but at Black Marble's offices in Bradford, near the University.

Time 6:30pm for a 7pm start.
Get Directions »
Get Address »

Next meeting is happening on Thursday 14th of February

2008-02-05T17:12:00.000Z

On Thursday the 14th at 7pm we are going to have two shorter, or rather more agile talks:

"CRAP hits the fan - Change Risk Analyzer and Predictor" - new kid on the block of software metrics and static code analyzers presented by Daniel Drozdzewski - Java developer at Erudine. This presentation focuses on software metrics in general or rather their failure and proposes gentle solution supported by examples in Java.

"Zero tolerance for bugs" - Ralph Williams one of very few agile testing gurus out there with many years of experience as a test manager in various IT companies is going to present his view on bugs and promises to support it with plenty of examples and anecdotes from the industry.

Guys we all know that it is Valentines Day. We tried to book Wednesday, which by the way is going to be our regular meeting day, but Leeds Hiking Society has beaten us up to booking the venue.
We promise to keep it short and interesting, and be done by 8pm (ish), which is a perfect time to have a table for two booked somewhere in Leeds.

Social Gathering on the 10th of January

2008-01-04T10:12:00.000Z

Our next meeting is going to be a social aimed at meeting people and hearing what they would like to see happening within the club. We will also use that occasion to announce few small changes within the club. If you have any opinions on the club please come along. If you can't be there, please use our website to express your views and opinions.

Starting from February we are going to kick off proper talks and presentations, which you are more than welcome to attend.

IMPORTANT: Please take the Meetings' Time Survey

2008-01-03T15:24:00.001Z

XP Club Crew would like to invite you (potential and regular audience) to take part in the survey, where we ask what time is the best for our gatherings. Please follow this link to take the survey.

Happy New Year

2008-01-03T15:20:00.001Z

The whole crowd behind organizing XP Club would like to wish everyone and each one separately fantastic New Year 2008, lots of successes in personal and professional life, and let the code and computers be easier and better than ever.

Variables, Accessors and FOR loops are Considered Evil - Coding in Style.

2007-12-12T11:16:00.000Z

Our next meeting is happening on Thursday, 13th of December 2007 at 7pm in our usual place (Victoria Hotel).

Phil Rice (Erudine's CTO) is going to present and defend the thesis "Variables, Accessors and FOR loops are Considered Evil - Coding in Style".

Phil is going to share his views on how to make code more manageable and easier to refactor by using certain tricks, concepts and design patterns. His presentation is going to be associated with real time coding and various code examples in Ruby and Java. As usual, there will be time for Q&A, the odd pint or two, and networking in general.

Everyone welcome!

Thursday the 8th October, Victoria Hotel

2007-11-07T09:30:00.000Z

Hi Everyone,

I haven't been able to get the usual room in the Victoria, so we will be meeting in the smaller room behind the main bar in the Victoria. (Hence no presentation this month.)

I thought we would still meet in the Victoria hotel, have a quiet pint, and perhaps discuss all things XP/ Agile/ computery.

I have booked the usual room in the Victoria for Decembers meeting, so we should be back to a more formal format then.

Hope to see you on Thursday.

David.

Thursday, 8th November in the Victoria Hotel (different room)

2007-11-06T17:56:00.000Z

Thursday, 8th November in the Victoria Hotel, behind the bar.

2007-11-06T17:46:00.000Z

8th November in the Victoria Hotel, behind the bar.

2007-11-06T17:45:00.001Z

XP Club, Thursday the 8th of November, Victoria Hotel

2007-11-06T17:37:00.000Z

XP meeting, Thursday the 8th of November in Victoria Hotel

2007-11-06T16:45:00.000Z

Hi Everyone,

I haven't been able to get the usual room in the Victoria, so we will be meeting in the smaller room behind the main bar of the Victoria. So no formal presentation this month, but we should still be in a relatively quiet area.

I thought it would be nice to still meet, have a quiet pint, and perhaps discuss all things XP/ Agile/ computery.

I would be very interested in getting opinions about how to move the club forward.

I have booked the usual room in the Victoria for Decembers meeting, so we should be back to a more formal format then.

Hope to see you on Thursday.

David.

Agile Workshop by Clarke Ching

2007-10-09T14:56:00.001Z

This months meeting will be held in the Rochester room of the Queens Hotel, next to the train station. http://qurl.com/y2wfc

It is an Agile Workshop by Clark Ching http://www.clarkeching.com/ with the title

Programmers may be from Mars, Customers may be from Venus ...
but why does everyone think that Project Managers are from Uranus?

Meeting from 7.00pm till 9.00pm

STOP PRESS! September 13th XP Club is to be held at Dr Okells, not the Victoria Hotel

2007-09-12T13:54:00.001Z

Due to some bad planning, the Victoria Hotel has not been booked for September the 13th.

Instead we have booked a room at Dr Okells. Another nice real ale pub, within easy walking distance of the Victoria Hotel. It is located at

google map link 1

Directions from the Victoria can be found at the following link. (Note pedestrians don't need to follow the convulated one way system!)

google map of route from Victoria Hotel to Dr Okells

http://local.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=LS1+5RG&daddr=53.800721,-1.54963&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=17&mra=dme&sll=53.800135,-1.54978&sspn=0.004828,0.014269&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=17

Agile planning at its best!

Summer break for XP club - Next meeting September the 13th starting 7.00pm

2007-07-25T09:54:00.001Z

Hi all,

We are going to have a month off from the XP club.

I am going to spend the time thinking about how we continue to grow the club, to this end I would love
- suggestions for future talks/ demos
- volunteers to do future talks/ demos
- ideas to grow the XP club
- ideas about the forums - currently I get about 30 spam users being created a day, and the forums aren't really being used.

Any suggestions should either be emailed to david.turner@erudine.com or alternatively posted to the XP club forums.

cheers - David.

Next Meeting of the XP Club - The Devil is in the Refactoring

2007-07-09T15:01:00.000Z

The next meeting of the XP Club to take place on July 12th will feature a talk by the devilishly cunning Philip Rice, CTO of Harrogate-based software firm Erudine on the intricacies of "refactoring" code.

For those who aren't quite sure, refactoring is an essential part of Extreme Programming that requires programmers to regularly "clean up" source code to improve it's clarity and consistency - but without changing behaviour.

Philip is co-founder of XP practitioners Erudine and also writes the regular Screwpole Letters articles on IT advice (see the lastest episode)

Next Meeting of the XP Club

2007-05-21T13:29:00.000Z

The June 14th meeting will feature a talk by guest speaker Clarke Ching.

Talk: An overview of Agile with an emphasis on why agile works, why waterfall doesn't, the big mistake we made in the 70's

After last months very successful and interesting How to sell TDD to your colleagues and bosses presentation, Clarke returns to do another presentation while he is still based in Sheffield.

Bio: Clarke Ching is a New Zealander who now calls Scotland home. He is a passionate advocate of agile software development and is chairman of AgileScotland special interest group. He is a frequent speaker and part-time lecturer on agile methods. Clarke has an MBA specialising in Technology management and is an independent consultant specialising in the use of Agile and Theory of Constraints in software development. He is currently writing a "business novel" - see www.RollingRocksDownhill.com - which shows how Lean, Quality and Constraints Management thinking SHOULD be applied to software and product development organisations.