Extreme Programming Club

VSJ | Articles | Productivity against all odds

noreply@blogger.com (Neil McLaughlin) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:22:00 +0000

VSJ | Articles | Productivity against all odds

Noticed this article which gives some good examples of things to try to improve productivity. I've now added the root folder suggestion to my list of MagicWords in slickrun http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/ which in itself is a good productivity tool. Also, have got a printout of resharper key strokes next to my desk now and will be putting the mouse to my left to force me to use keystokes. Next thing is to create some submit hooks for tortoise to make the checklist for commits more seamless. Might consider getting the book too!

The Extreme Programming Club has changed it's name

noreply@blogger.com (Neil McLaughlin) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Please visit www.agileyorkshire.org for details.

All postings for upcoming meetings will now be made there.

11th February 2009 - Test Driven Development

noreply@blogger.com (Nick McKenna) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:55:00 +0000

Test Driven Development: A practical overview from practitioners.

This will be an introduction to the what, why and how of TDD by way of a practical demonstration with plenty of chance for discussion/heckling.

The pair presenters will be Adam Pridmore and Neil McLaughlin who are software developers at Masternaut ThreeX. They are part of a team which has been practicing agile software development for several years in sunny Skipton.

The venue is our usual one (Victoria Hotel, Leeds) with general milling around from 18:30 and presentation at about 19:00

Everyone is welcome whether you are a first timer or a club veteran! If this is your first session, please try to locate Nick McKenna (Treasurer), Dave Turner (Chairman) or Neil McLaughlin (Secretary) when you arrive and they will buy you a drink!

14th of January 2008: AGM at O'Neils

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:29:00 +0000

Tomorrow,

at 7pm the XP Club meets up to discuss its future plans, issues and anything related.
We will meet at the O'Neils Pub (next door to Victoria Hotel Pub) and in a nice and friendly atmosphere will be cover the following agenda (thanks Dave):

approve constitution

Committee members (do we need roles and responsibilities, eg
treasurer/ chairman/ secretary, or is this too heavyweight, and we are
happy to just have 3, 4, 5, 6 committee members)

Agree who is on the committee

Bank account

Website and hosting. I would suggest we point
extremeprogrammingclub.com to point to www.agilist.net and rebrand
there. extremeprogrammingclub.com is still a nice domain to have though.
We also need to get the domain names signed across to the club. We also
need to discuss improving the website. (I can feel an action coming to
me, to finish what I start...)
Future speakers - how we get them. (I am currently speaking to BJSS,
and hopefully they will offer to do something for us, and we can chase
thoughtworks again)

Conference, is having a one day conference (annual?) something we
would like to do, or is it too much work

Open source project?

Drinks and snacks thanks to our sponsors will be provided

see you there...

December meeting: Design Patterns and Christmas outing

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:21:00 +0000

We are very pleased to announce that on the 10th of December (2nd Wednesday) we are meeting at the Victoria Hotel Pub in the room behind the bar and we will have Gary Short presenting us a talk on Design Patterns. Finally we are hosting a Premiership speaker with loads of presenting experience, charisma and software development history spanning over the decades.

Gary is a Technical Evangelist for Developper Express, writes his personal blog for few years now, and work blog. Gary is an avid speaker presenting at various conferences and developers gatherings all over the country and on international stage too. Please see his blog for an extensive list of talks and while you there, please have a look at the tags, to see how many things interest Gary.

After the talk, some Q&A session and some networking, we will all head off to Leeds Christmas Market, to have some wurst, sauerkraut and continental lager.

Drinks and snacks thanks to our sponsors are free.

We will also draw one free personal license for any of the products by JetBrains - our fantastic sponsor.

November Meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:01:00 +0000

On second Wednesday (12th of November @ 7pm for 7:30pm) at Victoria Hotel Pub in Leeds City Center, we are meeting to see a presentation by Daniel Drozdzewski about the future of computing.

After the presentation we will have an open discussion about design in software projects with focus on Agile methodologies.

Drinks and snacks thanks to our sponsors are free.

We will also draw one free personal license for any of the products by JetBrains - our new sponsor.

October Meeting: "Agile Narrative" by Nick McKenna, Wednesday, 8th, 7pm for 7:30pm

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:19:00 +0000

As usual, on the second Wednesday at Victoria Hotel Pub, we are meeting to hear talk by Nick McKenna which will be on Agile Narrative. Nick as a Certified Scrum Practitioner in his last job has been responsible for turning team to Agile and introducing all the processes that come with it. Nick was kind enough to share his experience with the XP Club goers and we are very happy to see him presenting. Apart from talking about zero bugs policies and other clever things, Nick will also happily engage in the conversation about karate and diving.

Drinks and snacks thanks to our sponsors are free.

We will also draw one free personal license for any of the products by JetBrains - our new sponsor.

Next Meeting is a double bill: Code Quality and Scala + Lift

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:22:00 +0000

So here comes the agenda for our next meeting(usual time and place):

1. 'Code Quality Focus Exercise' based on the last meeting of the ThoughtWorks' GeekNight presented by myself. It is a quick and simple, yet powerful, group exercise, that brings quite a lot of visibility of what software quality is about and how it is context dependent. On the same day I will facilitate the same exercise at my workplace so after doing it at the club's meeting we should have interesting discussion comparing those two groups.

2. 'Scala + Lift in context of club's website revamp' presented by David Turner of William Hill. David is an experienced programmer, project manager, agile coach and generally man of many talents. As he is the only one so far taking the work on the club's website seriously, he will be the best presenter for this matter.

As usual drinks and snacks thanks to our sponsors are free.

Also we will draw one free personal license for any of the products by JetBrains - our new sponsor.

See you there!

Scala, Lift and the future of club's webiste

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:03:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:18:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:48:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:49:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Fennell) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:37:00 +0000

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

'Continuous Integration' cont.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:40:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Fennell) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:17:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:12:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:12:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:24:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:20:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (Daniel Drozdzewski) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:30:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:56:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 17:46:00 +0000