Scrum Learning Series pt. 1 – Tonight!

The first presentation about Scrum, as part of The Winnipeg Scrum Experience project is tonight!

Only one person RSVP-ed ‘Yes’. Perhaps I should apologize to those who would really like to come out but can not because they are going to the Secret Handshake + NMM Christmas Party, if there is anyone like that 🙂 I chose the date before the Christmas Party date was announced, and I just stuck with it, so sorry about that!

I look forward to hanging out with Jeff again, and practising the Intro to Scrum presentation!

Developing software for a problem you already have, or IXDA Winnipeg UX Night FTW!

Last night I had a choice between going to Amir’s Single page web app workshop (Part 1) presentation at the .NET UG, or the IXDA Winnipeg UX Night.

I really wanted to go to both of those, but because Knockout.js ( the framework with which Amir was going to show us how to build a single-page web app ) has an online tutorial, and because I really enjoyed the first IXDA Winnipeg night, I decided to attend the IXDA event, and I’m glad I chose it.

Both presenters seemed like great thoughtful guys, and I will share my favorite idea with you ( loosely quoting ):

If you develop software to solve a problem you have, you can yourself make all the decisions for how the software should work, therefore largely reducing the amount of requirement eliciting you have to do.

Probably a lot of software development contexts do not have this luxury, but I still think it is an interesting ideal to strive for, and if software development becomes as ubiquitous skill as some predict, the context of developing software for a problem you already have will be more common.

Working with Laravel, or “Stay out of my way, but be there for me”

I got the opportunity to work with the Laravel framework on a new piece of software we are writing at work.

My favorite part so far is that I’ve managed to stay away from things I don’t yet need, like ORM/migrations and controllers-as-classes, while at the same time things like routing or caching were available for me when I needed them. If you’re interested at peeking at how I am using it, let me know.

I think my ideal framework at this moment would have all the pieces turned off, but available for me to turn on when I decide I want to use them.

An OO PHP implementation of a collection of cachable functions

I don’t know about you, but I always get a bit excited when I get to use PHP’s magic methods.

Here’s an implementation I did at work for a class which contains multiple functions whose result needs to only be “calculated” every few minutes, but the results could be retrieved many times by different people within that period ( i.e. the functions are “cachable” ).

See it here.

2013 Code Retreat Pre-session

I knew I wasn’t the only one so excited about the upcoming Code Retreat to want to get together with others before the event and prepare!

After getting a hold of xorrbit on Freenode and a short conversation, we arranged to prepare for the Code Retreat at SkullSpace next Thursday at 6pm.

Andrew will talk about code retreat in general, and about CoffeeScript – his preferred language for the event.

Winnipeg Code Retreat 2013

Yay!

Code Retreat is coming up again, this time at SkullSpace. Learn more and register to attend!

Here are a couple of links to posts and code I created around last year’s Code Retreat:

Lately, I’ve been programming with Python when I have a choice, so Python and DocTest will be my #1 environment of choice.

I hope to see You, and learn from You there!

Won 4th Place in the BSides Winnipeg 2013 “Capture the Flag” Contest!

I won a book, Job Reconnaissance, for placing 4th in the BSidesWpgCTF that took place as part of the BSides Winnipeg 2013 2-day conference.

Truth be told, I probably placed 4 because only 3 serious contestants entered the contest, but aside from winning, it was also lots of fun – I now know what punch cards were used for and a bit about how they worked. As well, I got a chance to write a fun short python script.

The book seems like an intelligent, but also fun way of approaching getting a job. I look forward to reading it!

My Inspiration ( Passion? ) for Software Development

I just came back from King’s Head, where I attended the first day of BSides Winnipeg 2013. Michael Zapp talked about the fact that he likes the hardware. That’s the fun stuff, to paraphrase him.

If I had to define what my passion is in the larger field that I work in, I would define it to be the fact that software is written by and for people. So things like “customer service” or “team building” are the things that inspire me and drive me to be the best I can be 🙂

What’s your passion?