How to Avoid Stepping in a Big Ball of Mud

Talk: How to Avoid Stepping in a Big Ball of Mud
Speaker: Matt Hunt
Hosts: UCAS

What is a big ball of mud – and what does it have to do with coding and Japan?

Clean architecture is more needed than ever before. SOLID principles are the order of the day and with code bases of hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of lines – it’s never been more important to combat developer turnover and code entropy by building and focusing on good architecture principles. So, what’s the opposite of beautiful clean code architecture?

“A Big Ball of Mud is a haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape-and-baling-wire, spaghetti-code jungle. These systems show unmistakable signs of unregulated growth and repeated expedient repair. Information is shared promiscuously among distant elements of the system, often to the point where nearly all the important information becomes global or duplicated.” – Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder

How do you avoid accidentally stepping in a big ball of mud!? Well – All of your questions shall be answered by Matt Hunt on the 8th of February at UCAS. Matt is both an AWS and Microsoft certified developer who has contracted at some of the biggest .NET contract houses in the country and in his spare time gives great talks on relevant topics occasionally offering surprising controversial takes (especially on SOLID principles)!

His talk “Avoid Stepping in a Big Ball of Mud” has been well received already in several places and may just be what you need to stop your code from looking like a spaghetti junction

If you’re interested – the talk will be held in person on the 8th of February 2023 at our amazing hosts, UCAS. For those who are driving down, there is plenty of parking space available just opposite the UCAS offices off New Barn Lane. Come along for some refreshments, food, a great talk in some great offices and a great chance to dotNETwork – and since you made it this far – the Japan thing.

In Japan, there’s something called dorodango, which is the art of polishing balls of mud into beautiful shiny spheres! They look great when they’re done: https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/IoeTMBNlfScnUkUk.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1

And much like good code - they're the result of iterative and relentless improvement and polishing

Agenda:

6:00 - Doors open for food and refreshments, a great time to talk and Network
7:00 - Talk starts, with an introduction from UCAS and iO followed by speaker Matt Hunt
8:00 - Some time afterwards to talk and digest