Name: There's No Such Thing as Plain Text with Dylan Beattie
Start: 2023-10-11T18:30:00+01:00
End: 2023-10-11T20:30:00+01:00
Location: The Jointworks

**There's No Such Thing as Plain Text**

Software is complicated. Machine learning, microservice architectures, message queues… every few months there’s another revolutionary idea to consider, another framework to learn. And underneath so many of these amazing ideas and abstractions is text. When you work in software, you spend your life working with text. Some of those text files are source code, some are configuration files, some of them are documentation. Editors, revision control systems, programming languages - everything from C# and HTML to Git and VS Code is based on the idea that we’re working with “plain text” files. But… what if I told you there’s no such thing?

When we say something is a plain text file, we’re relying on a huge number of assumptions - about operating systems, editors, file formats, language, culture, history… and, most of the time, that’s OK. But when it goes wrong, good old plain text can lead to some of the weirdest bugs you’ve ever seen. Why is there Chinese in the SQL event logs? Why has the city of Aarhus disappeared? And why does Magnus Mårtensson always have trouble getting into the USA? Join Dylan Beattie for a fascinating look into the hidden world of text files - from the history of mechanical teletypes, to how emoji skin tones actually work. We’ll look at some memorable bugs, some golden rules for working with plain text, and we’ll find out what the phrase “PIKE MATCHBOX” has to do with driving in the Soviet Union.

**Agenda:**

18:30 Arrive, Network and Food.

18:45 Introductions and catch-up.

19:00 Talk.

20:30 Close and head off to [1000 Trades](https://1000trades.org.uk) for some more talking.

Dave Evans

Ryan Glenn Smith

Birmingham .Net & MAUI (Xamarin) User Group

.NET Foundation

ParentPay

TechMids

DotNet Foundation

British Computer Society - Birmingham

Technology

.NET

Xamarin

Software Development

Open Source

Mobile Development

iOS Development

Android Development Operating Systems Technology

Cross Platform Development

Windows

Microsoft Azure

Dylan Beattie is a consultant, software developer and international keynote speaker. He’s the director of [Ursatile](https://ursatile.com/), an independent consultancy based in London that specialises in helping organisations bridge the knowledge gap between software development and business strategy. Dylan has been building data-driven web applications since the 1990s; he’s managed development teams, designed large-scale distributed systems, taught workshops on Microsoft .NET and HTTP API development, and presented keynote talks at software conferences on four continents.

Before founding Ursatile, Dylan was CTO at Skills Matter in London until they closed down in 2019. Prior to that he was webmaster, IT Manager, and eventually systems architect at [Spotlight](https://www.spotlight.com/), where his first-hand experience of watching an organisation and its codebase evolve over more than a decade provided him with a unique insight into how everything from web standards and API design to Conway’s Law and recruitment ends up influencing a company’s code and culture.

Dylan grew up in southern Africa, moving to the UK with his family when he was nine. He’s a [Microsoft MVP](https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/5002699) and holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Southampton. He’s the creator of [Rockstar](https://codewithrockstar.com/), a programming language designed for creating computer programs that are also songs, and he’s performed his software-themed parodies of classic rock songs all over the world as [Dylan Beattie and the Linebreakers](https://dylanbeattie.net/music). He’s into skiing, scuba diving, Lego, cats, travel and photography. You’ll find him online at [dylanbeattie.net](https://dylanbeattie.net/) and on Twitter as [@dylanbeattie](https://twitter.com/dylanbeattie/), and offline at meetups and rock bars all over the world, wearing a big black hat.

Birmingham .Net & MAUI (Xamarin) User Group

There's No Such Thing as Plain Text with Dylan Beattie

Birmingham .Net & MAUI (Xamarin) User Group

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