Development Book Club?

[Ed Blackburn]

A few people on twitter have been discussing reading London dev / tech
book of late [1]. A suggestion for a development book club was made.
Twitter is grand but 140 characters are a bit too terse for me to
explain my thoughts and for people to respond and collaborate
appropriately.

This may not be a great place to host this conversation but I’m
hurried (and lazy), so an apology if this doesn’t concern you.

My ideas are simple really:

- Agree material beforehand.
- Divide material into achievable chunks (a chapter or two depending
on volume)
- Come up with a _proposed_ venue and date
- Keep in touch whilst reading so we can bring forward, push back a
proposed meeting dependent upon how the group is progressing with the
material.
- Decide whether a book is worth reading cover to cover as a
group..It’s crap let’s move on...
- Facilitate splitters for SIGs
- Platform agnostic
- Discretion books aren’t always cheep.
- If it’s successful, invite students, so we can as a community can
give back to the industry..?

Logistically I was thinking:

- Alternate between pubs and cafes.
- Meet in evenings in Central London to facilitate commuters.
- Encourage spontaneous lunch / after work debates if people are
debating intensely on email / twitter.

First Material Suggestion:

As @icooper endearingly termed it at alt.net open spaces “The second-
half of the DDD book”. Let’s reorder the DDD books chapters and start
reading them a couple at a time?

First Meeting:

Tuesday 15th September, location to be decided dependent upon numbers
etc..(Looking at Ning Sept in mega busy...)

Thoughts, suggestions, conceptually and logistically, are most
welcome...

[1] http://search.twitter.com/search?q=devbookclub

[Mark Needham]

I'm not in the UK at the moment but when I am I'll be sure to come
along.

We've been running a book club internally at ThoughtWorks in Sydney
for about 8 or 9 months and we actually started with Domain Driven
Design and went through about 15 chapters before it felt like it was
getting boring and now we've moved onto the idea of reading papers,
select chapters from different and mostly recently discussing InfoQ
videos.

It (perhaps not surprisingly) works best if everyone has actually read
the whole of the material instead of just turning up having not read
it (although you can still learn from what other people say it's hard
to give much relevant input if you didn't read the chapter).

Some of the DDD chapters are quite long so I'd maybe look to split a
chapter between people if it's too long or just do half a chapter
instead. We found that 30-40 pages in a week was too much but if we
lowered that to around 10 pages then it pretty much guaranteed that
everyone would read all of it - that means you progress slower I guess
but the discussions are more interesting.

Will be interesting to see how it goes - it's definitely a great
platform for learning.

Cheers,
Mark

[Chris Browne]

anyone still interested in giving this a go?

sorry for not replying when this thread was started, i've had it open
in the fox ever since it was posted and have just never got round to
replying, and now i see we've passed ed's suggested initial meet up
date!

if anyone else is still keen, can we decide another date and some
specific material?

i'm up for hitting the second half of DDD, starting at part 4
strategic design, chapter 14: bounded contexts. there is a good 27
pages before you get to shared kernel, would that be too much material
to read and take in before a meet up?

thoughts? suggestions? dates?

chris.
@shiftin

[geoffd...@googlemail.com]

I would definitely be up for it.

As a next step, it might be worth setting up a devbookclub group, and
then asking everyone on this group, and other social networks (i.e.
twitter) to sign up if they are interested? As more people join, we
can agree on the book, dates and venue. (The DDD suggestion sounds
good).

If we set it up today, we can make people aware of it at the edge user
group and altnetbeers?

Andrew
@andrewrimmer

[Ian Cooper]

I think the discussion on twitter is around doing it at kuchtime because evenings are starting to look very crowded.

 

Ian Cooper
07970-411892 (M)

"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. "
Mark Twain

---

From: Chris Browne <job...@gmail.com>
To: altnetuk-discuss <altnetuk...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 16 September, 2009 9:56:49
Subject: [altnetuk-discuss] Re: Development Book Club?

[Garry Shutler]

I'm interested. A separate group would probably be good. Maybe get
people together at altnetbeers tonight for a quick chat about it?

[Chris Browne]

lunchtimes would be good for me, but i reckon that people wouldn't
want to travel too far in their hour lunchtimes, so i'm guessing that
everyone who's interested and that work in similar areas could meet
up, but also arrange some more ad-hoc evening meets that more people
could make it to? also a chance to have a few mid week beers ;)

i sense some discussions at tonight's alt net beers coming on!

[Ed Blackburn]

Yeah my date past yesterday; with the only comment coming from Mark in
Aus. Looking at Ning evenings are busy. I like all the suggestions
thus far and would be keen on discussing with those present at Alt Net
Beers this evening.

I don't this needs a great deal of organisation. Just somebody to pick
a time and a place. Toby has suggested lunch, next Thursday; 24th
September. Venue - presumably in the City - to be confirmed.

I think we should run with that and Chris' blue bible suggestion. I
reckon we should rubber stamp that and see what happens next Thursday!

[Chris Browne]

i don't think this needs a great deal of organisation either, just a
lot of communication :) i've got a feeling that when this actually
gets off the ground we'll see more activity on twitter about it, how
far people are getting with the chosen material and be able to gauge
better the amount of material undertaken, frequency of meeting up etc.

im' actually quite excited about it! the guy that sits next to me at
work has also purchased the big blue book after listening to me drivel
on about the little i know about it. its going to be great to be able
to chat to others about the material and how some of the concepts can
be applied in practice.

i've put next thursday 24th in my dairy. i work around the liverpool
st. area, who else?

c.

[Stuart Campbell]

Count me in for Thurs 24th in Liverpool Street/Spitalfields area.

@stucampbell

[Ian Cooper]

End of sprint, but yes, I should be able to do that.

If we get a lot of people a London Bridge/Southwark club could be a possiblity too.

I suspect we may have many clubs instead of one.

 

Ian Cooper
07970-411892 (M)

"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. "
Mark Twain

---

From: Stuart Campbell <stuart.c...@gmail.com>
To: altnetuk...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, 16 September, 2009 13:54:20

[Dylan Beattie]

Would anyone be interested in a Soho / West End 'splinter group' - for those of us who can't make it to the City and back in a lunch hour?

We'll cover the same topics on the same dates, to keep the online discussion coherent, but at a convenient venue in Soho somewhere.

Let me know if you're interested (or find me at AltNetBeers tonight!) and we'll see if we can get enough takers together for the 24th.

Dylan

2009/9/16 Stuart Campbell <stuart.c...@gmail.com>

[Kian Ryan]

SPLITTERS!

On Sep 16, 2009 5:40 PM, "Dylan Beattie" <dy...@dylanbeattie.net> wrote:

Would anyone be interested in a Soho / West End 'splinter group' - for those of us who can't make it to the City and back in a lunch hour?

We'll cover the same topics on the same dates, to keep the online discussion coherent, but at a convenient venue in Soho somewhere.

Let me know if you're interested (or find me at AltNetBeers tonight!) and we'll see if we can get enough takers together for the 24th.

Dylan

2009/9/16 Stuart Campbell <stuart.c...@gmail.com>

> > Count me in for Thurs 24th in Liverpool Street/Spitalfields area. > > @stucampbell > > > On Wed...

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are su...

[Nic Wise]

Maybe it's easier to consider it a fork?

:)

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 14:28, Kian Ryan <kian...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> SPLITTERS!
>
> On Sep 16, 2009 5:40 PM, "Dylan Beattie" <dy...@dylanbeattie.net> wrote:
>
> Would anyone be interested in a Soho / West End 'splinter group' - for those
> of us who can't make it to the City and back in a lunch hour?
>
> We'll cover the same topics on the same dates, to keep the online discussion
> coherent, but at a convenient venue in Soho somewhere.
>
> Let me know if you're interested (or find me at AltNetBeers tonight!) and
> we'll see if we can get enough takers together for the 24th.
>
> Dylan
>
> 2009/9/16 Stuart Campbell <stuart.c...@gmail.com>
>
>> > Count me in for Thurs 24th in Liverpool Street/Spitalfields area. > >
>> > @stucampbell > > > On Wed...
>
> >
>



--

Nic Wise - Fast Chicken UK Ltd
t. +44 7788 592806
b. http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/
e. ni...@fastchicken.co.nz
google talk. ni...@fastchicken.co.nz

[Finn Neuik]

I'd be up for one in the London Bridge area, getting to the other locations and back would be possible - but then there'd be no time to actually talk about anything!

Have fun
Finn

2009/9/16 Ian Cooper <ian_hammo...@yahoo.co.uk>

[Chris Browne]

so it seams that next thursday is good for people to meet up, my
question is what's on the agenda?!

choice of material?

c.
@shiftin

On 17 Sep, 09:42, Finn Neuik <fin...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I'd be up for one in the London Bridge area, getting to the other locations
> and back would be possible - but then there'd be no time to actually talk
> about anything!
>
> Have fun
> Finn
>

> 2009/9/16 Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_coo...@yahoo.co.uk>

>
> > End of sprint, but yes, I should be able to do that.
>
> > If we get a lot of people a London Bridge/Southwark club could be a
> > possiblity too.
>
> > I suspect we may have many clubs instead of one.
>
> > Ian Cooper
> > 07970-411892 (M)
>
> > "Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their
> > guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. "
> > Mark Twain
>

> > ------------------------------
> > *From:* Stuart Campbell <stuart.campbe...@gmail.com>
> > *To:* altnetuk...@googlegroups.com
> > *Sent:* Wednesday, 16 September, 2009 13:54:20
>
> > *Subject:* [altnetuk-discuss] Re: Development Book Club?

[Gareth B]

I'm the guy who sits next to Chris Browne at work who's purchased the
big blue book.

I am up for Thursday, if I don’t have a football match.
Chapter 14: bounded contexts seems like a good place to start for me,
as it applies to a big bundle of legacy systems we are currently
trying to change.

Gareth.

[Chris Browne]

alright guys,

time is fast approaching for this thursdays #devbookclub meeting, and
we haven't really discussed the topic of conversation yet. toby came
up with a good suggestion about the subject matter of this thursdays
#devbookclub meetup which was to pick something fairly small that can
easily be absorbed by everyone in the next two days, something like a
screencast or paper, then meetup on thursday to have a chat about the
material watched/read, and to firm up the exact content of further
meetups so we're all clear about what the plan is.

i would like to suggest a screencast that not only has some great
content in its own right, but also follows the impression that i'm
getting about the choice of actual material for our first book…(part 4
of the big blue book anyone?!):

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/design-strategic-eric-evans

its a good screencast that talks at quite a high level about the
reasoning of some of the concepts that can be found in the back end of
DDD. i think this would be a great start if we’re planning to tackle
DDD, and a good way to spend an hour and talk about it if not :)

thoughts?

chris.
@shiftin

[HolyTshirT]

Ok location sorted, it is at the Costa Coffee on Eldon Street
http://bit.ly/1RIKYC .

Thanks Chris for the topic !

See you all on Thursday.

Toby
@holytshirt

> > > > >> > > > > > [1]http://search.twitter.com/search?q=devbookclub- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Chris Browne]

my rough notes that i took this lunch time when watching the
screencast, maybe someone might find them useful, or give us a
framework for discussion tomorrow, beware they are really rough!!!


Chris.
@shiftin


Notes on Eric Evans Strategic Design QCon London talk:
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/design-strategic-eric-evans

Hard to resist designing all parts of a system, when not all parts
need designing.

The messy interconnectedness of systems are sometimes the most
important parts of a system, and sometimes the least understood
(people leaving etc)

options?
- The grand redesign, Y1, building a platform, works. Y2 building
supporting systems, first half works, then goes bad. Y3 never happens.
- Refactor it
- Hack it, continue down the same path as before doing the same hacky
development. not a good place to be.

Core Domain
- Generic subdomains (i.e. accounting)
- Supporting subdomains
- core domain (tiny font!) e.g. rating feature comparison between
amazon and ebay. this is what makes the system worth writing and not
buying or outsourcing. this is got by understanding the business
strategy.

Irreponsible programmers become hero's. Why?
Senior devs spend all the time working on the platform and cleaning up
the mess made by the IPs.
IP's use the platform to deliver the new and sexy features.

Responsible Designers
how can we just build just the core part at the top of the pyramid?
freeing the senior devs from building loads of platform generic and
supporting subdomains and get them working in the core domain?

There are always multiple models
- No grand unifications, no enterprise models (even shared db
schemas?!)
Need a USEFUL model
- does not have to be the right model
- there are many many models, all of them wrong! get a useful one.

Different models are fine when they are separate
- things might need to change when integrating different models of
the same thing.
- use translation layers for this integration

Bounded Contexts
- within this context we can have a ubiquitous language.

Context Maps
Translation maps

Big balls of mud can not support the UL.

Have a single unified model within any one context
- no duplication within a context
- may have it between contexts

Precision designs are fragile.

Anti-corruption layer
- Is a barrier and a translation layer
- Can take the place of the 1-2 year initial platform development
planned originally
- Will be nasty and full of hacks
- probably make the legacy system even worse, but for greater gain
for todays business needs.

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