NealFord

Name: ArchConf
Start: 2019-12-09T08:00-0500
End: 2019-12-12T17:00-0500
Location: Opal Sands Resort

DIRECTOR / SOFTWARE ARCHITECT / MEME WRANGLER

01 / BIOGRAPHY

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

02 / PRESENTATIONS AT ARCHCONF'19

Mon Dec 9 · 9:00 AM

Archived →

Wed Dec 11 · 9:00 AM

Building Evolutionary Architectures Workshop →

This workshop highlights the ideas from the forthcoming Building Evolutionary Architectures, showing how to build architectures that evolve gracefully over time.

Wed Dec 11 · 11:00 AM

Building Evolutionary Architectures Workshop →

This workshop highlights the ideas from the forthcoming Building Evolutionary Architectures, showing how to build architectures that evolve gracefully over time.

Tue Dec 10 · 8:30 AM

Architecture Foundations: Characteristics & Tradeoffs →

This session describes how architects can identify architectural characteristics from a variety of sources, how to distinguish architectural characteristics from domain requirements, and how to build protection mechanisms around key characteristics. This session also describe a variety of tradeoff analysis techniques for architects, to try to best balance all the competing concerns on software projects.

Tue Dec 10 · 10:30 AM

Architecture Foundations: Styles & Patterns →

This session covers basic application and distributed architectural styles, analyzed along several dimensions (type of partitioning, families of architectural characteristics, and so on).

Tue Dec 10 · 3:15 PM

Automating Architecture Governance →

This session describes mechanisms to automate architectural governance at application, integration, and enterprise levels

Tue Dec 10 · 1:30 PM

Restructuring & Migrating Architectures →

Patterns/antipatterns, techniques, engineering practices, and other details showing how to restructure existing architectures and migrate from one architecture style to another.

Tue Dec 10 · 5:00 PM

Where Do Ideas Come From? Creating, Cultivating, and Communicating IP →

How do you create creativity? This talk offers techniques and perspectives to discover, grow, and project your ideas.

BOOKS

The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))

Anyone who develops software for a living needs a proven way to produce it better, faster, and cheaper. The Productive Programmer offers critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use. Master developer Neal Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity--how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer, and avoid repetition--he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code, and become more valuable to your team. You'll learn to:

Write the test before you write the code
Manage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiously
Build only what you need now, not what you might need later
Apply ancient philosophies to software development
Question authority, rather than blindly adhere to standards
Make hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programming
Be sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstraction
Pick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job

This isn't theory, but the fruits of Ford's real-world experience as an Application Architect at the global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks. Whether you're a beginner or a pro with years of experience, you'll improve your work and your career with the simple and straightforward principles in The Productive Programmer.

The ThoughtWorks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation (Pragmatic Programmers)

ThoughtWorks is a well-known global consulting firm; ThoughtWorkers are leaders in areas of design, architecture, SOA, testing, and agile methodologies. This collection of essays brings together contributions from well-known ThoughtWorkers such as Martin Fowler, along with other authors you may not know yet. While ThoughtWorks is perhaps best known for their work in the Agile community, this anthology confronts issues throughout the software development life cycle. From technology issues that transcend methodology, to issues of realizing business value from applications, you'll find it here.

No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology: The 2006 Edition (Pragmatic Programmers)

Twenty-seven weekends a year, the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference rolls into another town, featuring the world's best technical speakers and writers. Up until now, you had to go to one of the shows to soak up their collective wisdom. Now, you can hold it in the palm of your hand. The No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology represents topics presented on the tour, written by the speakers who created it. This book allows the authors the chance to go more in depth on the subjects for which they are passionate. It is guaranteed to surprise, enlighten, and broaden your understanding of the technical world in which you live.

The No Fluff, Just Stuff Symposium Series is a traveling conference series for software developers visiting 27 cities a year. No Fluff has put on over 75 symposia throughout the U.S. and Canada, with more than 12,000 attendees so far. Its success has been a result of focusing on high quality technical presentations, great speakers, and no marketing hype. Now this world-class material is available to you in print for the first time.

Art of Java Web Development: Struts, Tapestry, Commons, Velocity, JUnit, Axis, Cocoon, InternetBeans, WebWork

A guide to the skills required for state-of-the-art web development, this book covers a variety of web development frameworks. The uses of the standard web API to create applications with increasingly sophisticated architectures are highlighted, and a discussion of the development of industry-accepted best practices for architecture is included. The history and evolution toward this architecture and the reasons it is superior to previous efforts are described, and an overview of the most popular web application frameworks, their architecture, and use is provided. The same application is built in six different frameworks, allowing developers to conduct an informed comparison. An evaluation of the pros and cons of each framework is provided to assist developers in making decisions or evaluating frameworks on their own. Best practices covered include sophisticated user interface techniques, intelligent caching and resource management, performance tuning, debugging, testing, and web services.

CATCH NEAL LIVE

8 sessions at December 9 - 12, 2019. Seats are first-come — add them to your agenda.

VIEW FULL SCHEDULE →

All signal.
Zero fluff.

DECEMBER 9 - 12, 2019 · OPAL SANDS RESORT · CLEARWATER, FL