ThoughtWorks is a software global company that believes that knowledge should be for all not just for a few. Therefore we try to share everything we have learned through events across the world, writing books and blogging.
Recently, ThoughtWorks took part in The Developer’s Conference (TDC), in the beautiful city of Florianópolis, from 15th to 18th of May. The event, which guarantees the interactivity of various sectors of IT, had over 1600 subscribers, 147 lectures and 21 different tracks. Some of the topics discussed were Android, Testing, Cloud Computing, Agile, Startups, Business Analysis, Big Data, and more. A complete list of activities is available here.
Day 1
On the first day, on the track of JavaScript we had the talk "Creating a toolkit for front-end" from Marcos Vinicius and Renan Martins. They are the creators of a toolkit for JavaScript, which came from the need to categorize the huge amount of libraries and frameworks that are available for web developers. During the presentation, they also made a connection with Agile development, since many of these needs are related to continuous integration, automation and testing. The Java Script Toolkit
In the Testing track there were two talks. "Become an agile tester!" was presented by Daniel Ricardo Amorim and Raquel Liedke, who showed a little bit of how it is possible for a tester be agile while helping his team to deliver real business value through quality software. Daniel and Raquel have cited some paradigms that need to be broken up and the most common testers mistakes, such as the paradigm of the tester in the waterfall model.
"Protractor - Testing AngularJS applications" was presented by Daniel Ricardo Amorim and was splitted into a theoretical part and a demonstration. In the theoretical part, there was a brief contextualization on how the AngularJS works and its mechanism of two-way bind and it was introduced the testing framework Protractor along with its history and benefits of use. During the demonstration a few basic examples of elements manipulation were performed using Protractor. These examples are part of an open source project that has been used in Testing Dojos and are available here. Framework on Github.
Day 2
On the second day, Gabriela Guerra and Nelice Heck presented at the Business Analysis track the talk "Voto Como Vamos: How did we improve the political campaign of Porto Alegre in 2012." The project was from a platform where all candidates have the same space and voice, that emerged in 2012 and it was the first project from Porto Alegre Como Vamos, an open movement, from civil society, non-partisan that seeks to bring citizens closer to politics. The project received a funding to conduct a collective educational videos and was produced in the period of 2 months for voluntary ThoughtWorkers. The focus of the presentation was the process of crowdfunding, achievements, technical and business challenges that were encountered.
At the Cloud Computing track there was the presentation "Sending messages from the cloud to your device" from Renan Reis. He talked about how to send messages to thousands of Android devices in real time via Google Cloud Messaging technology and demonstrated how an server event can generate messages for devices, avoiding pooling and assuring the delivery even with closed application, saving battery power and band.
Day 3
On the third day, at the Agile track Gabriela Guerra and Luiza de Souza presented "Software Kaizen: Acceleration of teams from a temporary immersion in high performance environment". The Software Kaizen is a teaching methodology that consists in accelerating teams through a temporary immersion in high-performance environment, based on agile methodologies. In the talk they shared all the challenges, experiences and results obtained both from the perspective of a business analyst and a developer.
Day 4
On the last day of the event were made 3 more talks. On the Architecture track there was the speech "API Design: Learning, Scheduling and Integrating" from Gilmar Leitão, which addressed the best practices and directives that should be considered when designing an API since its conception. Some of the topics presented discussed issues such as what are the characteristics of a good API, what is the role of TDD in developing an API and principles of design and programming. The talk included some practical examples applied in the jrimum.org project, one of the open source projects whose speaker participates effectively.
On the same track, Marcos Silveira made the presentation "What if your application could speak?" about domain-specific languages (DSL) and its use to improve and accelerate the development. Marcos addressed in general the process of creating a language, how to use DSLs in design and architecture and how to transform the DSL in a language that the team uses to communicate the business. Finally, some reflections on the expressive power of the languages were made, since anything can be created with words, and it is possible to make a virtual implementation of basically everything that a language defines.
On the Startup track there was another talk from Gilmar Leitao, who presented "Boleto Cloud", a free platform for payment slips that is available here. As one of the creators of this platform he talked about its foundation, what problems it intends to solve, how the lean startup influenced its development, in addition to showing the features, functionality and operation of the platform in general.
Besides great talks the event also had very interesting surprises such as popcorn popper controlled Rasberry Pi, Arduino and Java Embedded that was developed by Vinicius Senger (more info here) and a beer tap controlled by Java, JavaFX and loT from Bruno Borges and Marco Antonio Maciel.
The next editions of the TDC happen in July 30 to August 3 in Sao Paulo and from 16 to 18 October in Porto Alegre. We're waiting for the next year and hope to count on your participation!
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