Cape Town Backend Developers

[Fritz Meissner]

Hi all,

Over on Cape Town Ruby Brigade (CTRB) we're having a conversation
about starting a polyglot group called (probably) Cape Town Backend
Developers.

I'm sure anyone who has been on this list for a decent amount of time
can relate to the difficulty of maintaining enthusiasm over the long
term for a single language.

The proposal is to form a group that will have regular talks from
people with different programming backgrounds. Pretty much everything
is up for debate currently, it would be great to get the Java/JVM
people involved in the discussion.

Anyone interested? Got input?

Regards,
Fritz

[Ewald Horn]

Hey Fritz,

What do you mean maintaining enthusiasm for a single language is difficult?  

I've been learning Java for almost 20 years now and every time I get close to almost understanding it they change it!  

Seriously though, there are so many groups already, is it worth starting another and not joining the existing groups?

Kind regards,

Ewald

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[Alwyn van wyk]

hi Fritz - we have a few people in our office who may be interested; do you have a summary or description in mind that I can pass around?

Also, to Ewald's point, we can help to find a similar Meetup group, if it exists, or assist to create, if it doesn't.

[Fritz Meissner]

If you're on slack, please check out #ctbd where the initial
discussion is happening.

"Cape Town Backend Developers" is still just an idea from two or three
guys at our last CTRB meetup, so these answers are personal, not a
group thing:

Why a new group -

Existing groups are only useful if they're actually holding talks.
CTRB hasn't been, "Cape Town Java Developers" on meetup.com is going
reasonably but the JUG held something like one talk a year for the 10
years before 2015. NodeCPT hasn't held a talk since May 2015.

Why a polyglot group -

Let's broaden the audience to every software house in Cape Town. Ever
since AJAX we're all working in at least 2 languages, anyway. It would
be awesome to see where the inspiration for my favourite libraries
comes from. Maybe I'll learn enough to make language an actual design
choice - as opposed to "I know X, so I'll shoehorn this job into X".

Not everyone will attend every meeting, but I know I'm interested in a
cross section of what's going on in the JVM, BEAM, functional etc.
communities.

Some of these topics wouldn't ever get a single language community off
the ground in Cape Town. Personally, I want to try out Elixir as a
gateway language on the Erlang VM that is getting attention from many
Ruby programmers. I don't expect monthly talks on the topic, but a
bunch of people might be interested in one.

Why a backend group -

I think there's value in generating some energy around building good
backend solutions. It wouldn't hurt to remind the suits that there's
technical specialisation here - lest they get distracted by the hype
around front-end and mobile.

Anyone else got thoughts? Post here or bring to #ctbd on Slack!

Cheers
Fritz

[Matthew Marinovich]

Hi Fritz,

Sounds like a good idea to me.

I moved to CPT in 2008 and attended a couple of CTJUG talks, but there hasn't really ever been enough momentum.  I think most developers are interested in hearing about other technologies so having a polyglot group might generate a bit more interest.  A larger group should also open up more opportunities generally, which must be a good thing =)

Thanks for grasping the nettle and making the suggestion.

Matthew Marinovich

matthew.m...@gmail.com

Matthew Marinovich
matthew.m...@gmail.com
Mb +27 (0) 79 572 9308

[Evan Summers]

BTW NodeCPT is looking for an organiser, and then there will be talks. I'm happy to give talks on Node, but don't want to organise anything ;)

best

@evanxsummers

On 20 July 2016 at 11:50, Fritz Meissner <fritz.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Nitsan Wakart]

Hi,

I'm one of the CTJC organizers. CTJC started in August last year and has been pretty regular. We've had 10 meetups so far and have 340 members at the moment, growing steadily. The group held meetups hosted by several companies in Cape Town with one or 2 talks at each meetup. This group was founded to fill the void left by the CTJUG falling into inactivity.

I've reached out to several of the JVM based language meetups in hope to bring at least the JVM technologies under one roof. It did not happen. Organizers are not really open to melding meetups, and many people seem happy to join lots of little meetups, so maybe this is a non-issue.

I think that given the challenge in maintaining momentum and growing communities it would be good to enable collaboration between organizers so we can at least hold shared/polygot/cross-meetup events. I think many of the CTJC members would be happy to hear a talk on non-Java topics, and it would perhaps help if we could organize multi-meetup meetups (e.g. 2-3 lightening talks + 1 full length talk from a mix of topics).

Perhaps an organizer forum is required to facilitate this?

In any case, it sounds like a cool initiative, I'm happy to help if I can.

Nitsan

[Evan Summers]

Incidently, i'm keen to give a talk or two on Redis, and i don't expect there will ever be a Redis meetup group per se

i would say a backend dev group would be good forum for such technologies too 

and there is a frontend dev group ;)

best

@evanxsummers

[Nitsan Wakart]

Evan, I'm happy to include one of your talks in the next CTJC meetup lineup. At least some of the audience will have used Redis/Node in one form or another and I'm sure they'll be happy to learn more about it even if they didn't.

[Fritz Meissner]

One of the biggest reasons for me to create a new group is to avoid
conflict around "ending" any single language group that wants to
continue. The CTJC organisers have energy now so it makes sense for
them to continue with their own meetings if they want, even while some
members also go to CTBD meetings.

[Evan Summers]

shouldn't a "backend" group be more than languages per se, but also common technologies, such as NoSQL, 3rd party API integrations?

best

@evanxsummers

[Fritz Meissner]

Conversation is beginning on the #ctrb channel in the ZA Developers slack team.

For invites to ZA Developers please send me a direct mail specifically
requesting one - I don't want to mass invite people who might not be
interested.

Roger and Duncan, I have requested your invites already, thanks.

[Fritz Meissner]

Hi Evan,

Definitely interested in those topics as well. The point about
languages is just that we're not restricting ourselves to tools for
one language.

[Evan Summers]

What'w wrong with web.telegram.org which is at least open with opensource clients, and works on open phones like Ubuntu phone?

best

e

[Zuko]

Invite me please

Regards
Zuko Sapula

[Alwyn van wyk]

Hi Fritz - please include me for the slack invitation.

[Fritz Meissner]

Sorry - I shouldn't have phrased it as conversation will only happen
there. More that this the place where the majority of people who are
putting their hands up to organise are currently.

I'm happy to forward comms from here or get people onto that channel.

I don't think we will have much success in moving everyone to a third platform.

[Cobus Bernard]

Heya, there is also the ZA Tech slack group, signup via http://zatech.co.za - a lot of the people hang out there as well as ZA Tech.

(Self-promotion alert! We hang out in #devops & #developers on ZA Tech :P )