Software Craftsmanship at EclipseCon Europe 2012

October 19, 2012 | 3 min Read

In some of my previous posts I’ve talked about well-crafted code. I’m really convinced that software development is a craft - but what does that mean? The “Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship” contains the following 4 points:

Considering these points I took a look at the EclipseCon Europe 2012 session schedule and picked out a view talks I would like to attend. Maybe they are a good fit for you too ;). Here they are:

  • Getting Started with Xtend: It may be worthwhile to take a look at Xtend. It’s just Java - but with less boilerplate. The language integrates seamlessly with existing Java libraries and compiles to comprehensible Java source code. So, using this could lead to cleaner code.
  • Everything you always wanted to know about Versions* (*but were afraid to ask): Neil Bartlett will talk about software versioning. Every one of you knows that once software is written, it will evolve. Having sufficient versioning will lead to a better user experience and cleaner systems. The talk is focused on OSGi but I think the practices described by Neil will be valid for any software project.
  • Let’s make some 0xCAFEBABE!: Its clear that in order to be able to create large systems on top of it, you must understand a language well. In this session, Mark Hoffman will talk about Java bytecode fundamentals. As you probably know Mark is the author of JaCoCo and he also really seems to care about writing good software. This makes me think that his talk will be both technically interesting and give us some ideas about better software craftsmanship.
  • Jnario - BDD for Java: Behavior-driven development is widely used in languages other than Java. From my point of view in the Java world it’s just at it’s beginnings. Jnario is a new test framework that enables you to do BDD with Java. One of the speakers, Sebastian, worked with me as a student on a Google Summer of Code project. I can say he also cares about good code, and therefore, I think Jnario may be worth looking at.
  • It’s 2012 and your documentation sucks: Outdated documentation is really frustrating from the point of view of both creating and using it. The Obeo guys will give an introduction to Mylyn Intend which is a tool to prevent outdated documentation. This is new to me but based on the description,  I think it will be worth joining the session.

I hope you like the selection. Maybe you’d also like to attend my talk, Effective Mockito in a modular world. I will do a 60 minute TDD live coding session explaining mockito and how to use it efficiently. As always, feel free to disagree or suggest additional talks for software craftsmen ;).