Neal Ford
Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler
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.
Presentations
Architecture Foundations: Characteristics & Tradeoffs
Tuesday, 8:30 AM EST
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.
Architects must translate domain requirements, external constraints, speculative popularity, and a host of other factors to determine the key characteristics of a software system: performance, scale, elasticity, and so on. Yet architects must also analyze the tradeoffs each characteristics entails, arriving at a design that manages to maximize as many beneficial properties as possible. 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.
Architecture Foundations: Styles & Patterns
Tuesday, 10:30 AM EST
This session covers basic application and distributed architectural styles, analyzed along several dimensions (type of partitioning, families of architectural characteristics, and so on).
A key building block for burgeoning software architects is understanding and applying software architecture styles and patterns. This session covers basic application and distributed architectural styles, analyzed along several dimensions (type of partitioning, families of architectural characteristics, and so on). It also provides attendees with understanding and criteria to judge the applicability of a problem domain to an architectural style.
Restructuring & Migrating Architectures
Tuesday, 1:30 PM EST
Patterns/antipatterns, techniques, engineering practices, and other details showing how to restructure existing architectures and migrate from one architecture style to another.
A common challenge facing many architects today involves restructuring their current architecture or migrating from one architectural style to another. For example, many companies start with monolithic applications for simplicity, but find they must migrate it to another architecture to achieve different architectural characteristics. This session shows patterns/antipatterns, techniques, engineering practices, and other details showing how to make major changes to architectures. This session introduces a new measure, the architectural quantum, as a way of measuring and analyzing coupling and portability within architectures.
Automating Architecture Governance
Tuesday, 3:15 PM EST
This session describes mechanisms to automate architectural governance at application, integration, and enterprise levels
A nagging problem for architects is the ability to enforce the governance policies they create. Yet, outside of architecture review boards or code reviews, how can architects be sure that developers utilize their rules? This session describes mechanisms to automate architectural governance at application, integration, and enterprise levels. By focusing on fitness functions, architects define objective tests, metrics, and other criteria to ensure governance polices stick.
Where Do Ideas Come From? Creating, Cultivating, and Communicating IP
Tuesday, 5:00 PM EST
How do you create creativity? This talk offers techniques and perspectives to discover, grow, and project your ideas.
Where do ideas for new talks, books, videos, software…ultimately, everything…come from? A common question at conference panels to the speakers is “Where do you get your ideas for talks?” This session answers that question, along with how some of us cultivate new ideas. This talk investigates three aspects of ideation:
— How do new ideas arise?<br>
I cover various ways of synthesizing new ideas: switching axiom(s), mutation, oblique strategies, and a host of other techniques to generate a germ of a new idea
— How do ideas grow into intellectual property?<br>
I cover techniques for iterating on ideas to discover deeper meanings and connections. I also cover how techniques to evolve and grow ideas.
— How do you communicate new IP?<br>
I cover various ways to convey IP: presentations, articles, books, videos, and a host of other media. I talk about how writing and presenting techniques to amplify your new idea and get it out into the world.
One key to building new IP is separating ideation, organization, and realization, which often become jumbled. By separating them, we can build practices to allow each to flourish. This talk provide concrete advice in each area to help realize new ideas.
Creativity is the reason we have all the Cool Stuff we have. This session investigates how to fan the spark of an idea into a roaring flame of intellectual erudition.
Building Evolutionary Architectures Workshop
Wednesday, 9:00 AM EST
This workshop highlights the ideas from the forthcoming Building Evolutionary Architectures, showing how to build architectures that evolve gracefully over time.
An evolutionary architecture supports incremental, guided change across multiple dimensions.
For many years, software architecture was described as the “parts that are hard to change later”. But then microservices showed that if architects build evolvability into the architecture, change becomes easier. This workshop, based on my upcoming book, investigates the family of software architectures that support evolutionary change, along with how to build evolvable systems. Understanding how to evolve architecture requires understanding how different parts of architecture interact; I describe how to achieve appropriate coupling between components and services. Incremental change is critical for the mechanics of evolution; I cover how to build engineering and DevOps practices to support continuous change. Uncontrolled evolution leads to undesirable side effects; I cover how fitness functions build protective, testable scaffolding around critical parts to guide the architecture as it evolves.
The software development ecosystem exists in a state of dynamic equilibrium, where any new tool, framework, or technique leads to disruption and the establishment of a new equilibrium. Predictability is impossible when the foundation architects plan against changes constantly in unexpected ways. Instead, prefer evolvability over predictability. This hands-on workshop provides a high-level overview of a different way to think about software architecture.
Outline:
- Architecture Dimensions
- Engineering Incremental change
- Architectural Characteristics
- Exercise: determine appropriate characteristics
- Identifying Architectural Patterns
- Exercise: components and patterns
- Identifying Fitness Functions
- Exercise: determining fitness functions
- Retrofitting Existing Architectures
- Building Evolvable Architectures
Building Evolutionary Architectures Workshop
Wednesday, 11:00 AM EST
This workshop highlights the ideas from the forthcoming Building Evolutionary Architectures, showing how to build architectures that evolve gracefully over time.
An evolutionary architecture supports incremental, guided change across multiple dimensions.
For many years, software architecture was described as the “parts that are hard to change later”. But then microservices showed that if architects build evolvability into the architecture, change becomes easier. This workshop, based on my upcoming book, investigates the family of software architectures that support evolutionary change, along with how to build evolvable systems. Understanding how to evolve architecture requires understanding how different parts of architecture interact; I describe how to achieve appropriate coupling between components and services. Incremental change is critical for the mechanics of evolution; I cover how to build engineering and DevOps practices to support continuous change. Uncontrolled evolution leads to undesirable side effects; I cover how fitness functions build protective, testable scaffolding around critical parts to guide the architecture as it evolves.
The software development ecosystem exists in a state of dynamic equilibrium, where any new tool, framework, or technique leads to disruption and the establishment of a new equilibrium. Predictability is impossible when the foundation architects plan against changes constantly in unexpected ways. Instead, prefer evolvability over predictability. This hands-on workshop provides a high-level overview of a different way to think about software architecture.
Outline:
- Architecture Dimensions
- Engineering Incremental change
- Architectural Characteristics
- Exercise: determine appropriate characteristics
- Identifying Architectural Patterns
- Exercise: components and patterns
- Identifying Fitness Functions
- Exercise: determining fitness functions
- Retrofitting Existing Architectures
- Building Evolvable Architectures
Books
The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))
by Neal Ford
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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.
- Write the test before you write the code
The ThoughtWorks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation (Pragmatic Programmers)
by ThoughtWorks Inc.
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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)
by
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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
by Neal Ford
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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.