GOTO London 2016: Model-Minded Development

Abstract:

Senior software developers can walk up to a whiteboard and give an impromptu talk on how their software works, explaining both the details and the broad strokes. Most importantly, they connect the specifics of this system to general architecture patterns, domain models, design patterns, development patterns, or programming styles. How do we become “senior software developers”, other than waiting until we are older? The answer is models.

This talk covers Model-Minded Development. It briefly shows how we underestimate the cognitive task of programming and how we consequently use models to amplify our own cognitive abilities and to coordinate our ideas with others. Then we’ll dig into source code and compare equivalent programs that do better and worse jobs of expressing models in the code.

Note: I had flown overnight and was jetlagged when delivering this talk. The content is OK but you can tell I’m nursing a cold and had 4 cups of coffee. The GOTO Berlin talk is the same content with better delivery.

Delivered at GOTO London 2016

And here are the slides