Tag: seattle code camp

2x More 2019 Seattle Area Conferences

We’re halfway through the year now. In Seattle what’s going on in this later half? Here are a few of the conferences, camps, or code related events I’ve purchased tickets to over the last few months.

Seattle Code Camp – September 14th – I have attended a few, and even spoken at some of the code camps here in Seattle. Every time I’ve had a good time and enjoyed a number of very educational conversations. For an idea of the range of topics, also check out the schedule – it’s HUGE!

API City Conference – September 5th – API City is another non-profit community conference that I attended for the first time last year. Again, the sessions were good but the conversations, like with Seattle Code Camp, are what made this conference valuable.

Both of these conferences are extremely high value for the dollar. Arguably, I’d say these provide more value than some of the conferences that are in the $2000-3000 price range, which is mind boggling, but that’s what you get when the community comes together on something that people have a shared interest in!

Either one, or both, hope to see you there.

 

It’s Happening Again, Seattle Code Camp!

I’ve got two presentations happening this year at Seattle Code Camp! Are you signed up? If not, hit this and get signed up ASAP:  https://seattlecodecamp2013.eventbrite.com/

My two presentations are:

Distributed Databases – An Introduction to Riak

Presenter:Adron Hall

I’ll dive in with a quick definition and context of what distributed databases are. From there we’ll quickly move into what Riak is, how its architecture lends it toward being one of the premier distributed database solutions on the market today. We’ll take a walk through vector clocks to consistent hashs, clusters and rings managing the world of the distributed systems. Then we’ll dive into a use case with a put and pull of data from a walkthrough implementation of Riak.

…and…

Developer Workflow: From Angular.js, Riak, Testing and Vagrant Dev Environments

Presenter:Adron Hall

Each developer has to come up with a workflow that works well for them. Sometimes a lot of the workflow is dictated but there is still a lot that’s left up to the individual. With many modern tools you have a selection of everything from text editor, to IDE to actual operating system distribution. In this presentation I’m going to walk through some of the tooling to help keep all of these things under control during the course of programming efforts. …and yes, this will go beyond just the IDE (or text editor, etc)

…and others to check out!

Much Ado About Hadoop

By now you’ve heard the words “Big Data” and “Hadoop”, but you’re not sure what they mean, much less how to get started. You’re struggling with storing a lot of data, rapidly processing a huge volume of data, or maybe you’re just curious. There are a bewildering array of options and use cases within the Hadoop ecosystem. Every day I help customers understand their data problems, understand where Hadoop fits into their environment, and determine how they can use Hadoop to solve their problem. This session provides an introduction to what Hadoop is, when it’s appropriate to use Hadoop, and guidance on how to get started.

Unit Testing Web Development

Presenter:Mark Michaelis

When it comes to testing, Web Development is fraught with challenges whether it be from variations in browser behavior, the lack of compilation on JavaScript, or the traditional coupling between the UI and the code. In this session we walk through the complexities surrounding the testing of web projects and cover how to overcome these. This includes leveraging everything from source code analysis and JavaScript unit testing to UI and performance testing. Don’t miss this session to learn a multitude ways to significantly improve the quality of your web development.

Riak in a .NET World

Developers have a lot of choices when it comes to storing data. In this session, we’ll introduce .NET developers to Riak, a distributed key-value database. Through a combination of concepts and practical examples, attendees will learn when Riak might be appropriate, how to get started with Riak using CorrugatedIron (a full-featured .NET client for Riak), and how to solve data modeling problems they’re likely to encounter. This talk is for developers who are interested in backing their applications with a fault-tolerant, distributed database.

Introduction to Ember.js

Presenter:Jon Cortez

Ember.js is an open-source client-side JavaScript web application framework based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) software architectural pattern. It is designed to help developers build scalable Single Page Applications (SPAs) by incorporating common idioms and best practices into a framework that provides a rich object model, declarative two-way data binding, computed properties, automatically-updating templates, and a router for managing application state. In this session, you will learn the key concepts of Ember.js and how to use it to create a simple Single Page Application.

Think Like a Dev: Cognitive Pitfalls in Software Development

Presenter:Michael Ibarra

Our own minds are often working against us. What makes estimating so hard? Is there real value in planning poker? How effective are weekly retrospectives, really? Let’s explore how our minds may be working against us in ways we might not realize. We’ll examine the sources of some common cognitive biases, how they apply to our work efforts, and discuss some “strategery” for overcoming them.

Building a Server Appliance in Node.js

Presenter:Eugenio Pace

Auth0 is a server/service to drastically simplify authentication, identity federation & SSO scenarios; for web & mobile apps. It’s our first big project on node. One of the reasons we decided to build it entirely on node, is the ability to package it and deploy it anywhere: as a service in the public cloud, as a virtual appliance on private cloud, or as an appliance on-premises. In this session we’ll show how we built it. How we use JS for extensibility and easy customization. What worked well, what didn’t. Tools we used, etc.

Hope to see you there. Cheers!

Seattle Code Camp – A Summary

Wow… that was great.

I had three presentations. Well, honestly it was more like two presentations and a brainstorming session with about 3 dozen really smart people!

First there was the “Node.js Rulz! JavaScript takes over the full stack“. This session went pretty well, and I hope I got a lot of developers riled up to give Node.js a try. I discussed the various testing, framework, and other libraries needed to get going with development. I also did a test deployment against Tier 3’s Web Fabric PaaS (Cloud Foundry powered AWESOME). If you want to try out this deployment model, a sand box is available for free over at the Iron Foundry Project (.NET extensions for Cloud Foundry). Just sign up and we’ll get you added ASAP.

In summary, I went end to end with Node.js. Overall, it’s a beautiful thing that I highly suggest people give a thorough look at.

The next session I did was “Removing the Operating System Barrier with Platform as a Service“. This session covers my primary live of wrok and advocacy these days. It involves a key facet of software development that I’ve dubbed the “Beer Factor”. More on the “Beer Factor” later.  🙂

In this session I covered the history, reasons for, and overall impetus of PaaS (Platform as a Service) and why it matters to software developers. The general gist is, it is changing the very way we can and will be doing software development. The change, is absolutely for the better. Developers, consider yourself empowered. Also, more on this in the near future.

The last sessions, which was more of a large scale brain storming session, was “Putting it all together, letting apps lead the cycle, TDD in the cloud“. This session really kicked off a lot of different thoughts around the MAJOR gaps in cloud computing development. So I’m going to break out some of those key points below:

  • There is no logical, easy, or well defined way to test deployments to the cloud. If you’re AWS, Rackspace, Windows Azure, Tier 3, AppFog or any other company – deployment is not simple. A big impetus is to test production, something that absolutely has to be done. The gateways or checks in deploying software; for the underlying infrastructure, the platform, or anything that is geographically dispersed, multi-instance, or similar is very difficult. For software developers, devops, and the like, we want this to be better. We all brainstormed a bit around this and the resounding sentiment was, “damn, this is hard, yet so powerful and enabling that we have to figure out better ways to test and do deployments into cloud environments”
  • Chaos Monkey must bet let loose on the WORLD!!  See below:

    @adrianco chances of open sourcing Chaos Monkey? Room full of Cloud Devs want, egged on by @adron#seattlecodecamp

    @iC@adron it’s on the way, actively being cleaned up for github

    Adrian Cockroft RULZ! Thx Adrian, we’ll all keep an eye out for that! 🙂

  • One of the other things that was brought up was the endless options, and thus complexity, around the data story these days. This translates to, how do we simplify deployment of relational, document, object, key value or other types of databases? Each needs a particular type of default deployment. How do we as developers create a better model to get our data repositories of choice up and live. With Cloud Foundry the data deployments are a single node, which isn’t really useful for things like Riak, Mongo, Couch or databases that need to start with three or more nodes. It’s ok for relational databases, but it is very common to need that hot swappable database running somewhere. These are all questions that need answered to make the data story of PaaS technologies more palatable.
  • Monitoring and intelligent systems. Some suggestions around monitoring, which came from the question of how to test a deployed system before and after deployment, where pretty solid. Nodes need to be intelligent enough to be able to identify they’re live, active, and doing X, Y or Z. Controllers need to understand and know how to interact with these nodes. The back and forth is somewhat complex, but I can imagine just like with Cloud Foundry, they’re is a viable and simple solution among all of this with the appropriate abstractions and build out of systems.

That’s my summary. I had a blast, got to see a lot of people I know and meet a lot of new people I didn’t know. I always love being able to catch up and really expand on what our efforts are individually and collectively as a development community. Great fun, until next time, cheers!