Making Your Code Accessible to New Team Members - Matt Eland

Can't be there in person? Join us on YouTube!
https://youtube.com/live/CzdqvvqFZO8

Our code has baggage. Code rapidly goes from being pristine and green field to being eroded over time as requirements and features change, standards shift, and technologies change.

Beyond that, the very languages we use evolve over time. Dotnet and Java are over 20 years old and still heavily used in the industry. Each year we get reams of new features that can be added to existing codebases. The languages we use are not as simple or focused as they were two decades ago and it's becoming mathematically impossible to teach new learners all the language features they're likely to encounter in the "real world".

So how do we help guide new team members through our codebases? How do we use the latest and greatest features in our codebases while not burdening new developers with a massive learning curve? How do we help seasoned developers learn our team's preferences and standards?

In this talk we'll explore various techniques for determining coding standards for your organization, evaluating if the latest language features are really worth incorporating into your code, communicating the context of code, and guiding new team members of various experience levels through your codebase and its features. And we'll explore ways of doing all of this without sparking a technical civil war in the process!