Improving Code

Improvement is the critical differentiator of a team that is on the rise versus a team that is in constant struggle. Improvement is the special sauce that keeps us engaged and enthusiastic about our work. When things are getting better, we get energized. Improvement is the classroom that teaches us what "better" is. It's the process that helps us to make the unconscious conscious and the involuntary voluntary, and keeps us from making the same unconscious mistakes

But how do we make improvement the central focus and feature of our development processes and our team culture? What does an improvement culture look like? And what kinds of things can developers do to make improvement a foremost concern?

Lets talk about all the things we do to improve code: refactoring, code reviews, design principles, and everything else. Come and share your approach to improvement, and your experiences, both good and bad.

How do you improve code? How much importance do you invest in improving code? Does your team have a strong grasp on the cumulative effects of avoiding improvement? Has your project lost its productivity over time? Is your team measuring the impact of improvements they've made? How do you decide which improvements to make? Do you characterize improvements as "bike-shedding" or "yak-shaving"? Do you do improvement all the time or every now and then? Are there examples of improvement cultures that we can learn from?

Join us for a highly-interactive and participatory session on improving code. There are no slide decks. There are no speakers. There are only questions, desire to explore them, and a whiteboard for illustrating ideas.

This session will be facilitated by Nathan Ladd, the designer and developer of the TestBench testing framework, and co-founder of the Eventide Project.

Space is very limited. Please be considerate to your fellow developers and don't reserve a seat with an RSVP if you are only a "maybe". And please release your reservation if you can't make it.

This group conforms to the Eventide Community Protocols. See: https://github.com/eventide-project/contributor-assets/blob/master/protocols/generalized-community-protocols.md