Tech Leadership Meetup with Lorraine Steyn (Founder of Khanyisa Real Systems)

Join us at our next in-person Tech Leadership meetup. There will be drinks and snacks to kickoff the evening.

The event will be hosted at the Teamgeek offices in Cape Town (1st floor - 30 Waterkant Street).

The agenda for the evening will be as follows:
17:30 - 18:00 - Arrival: Drinks and snacks.
18:00 - 18:15 - Introduction and house rules.
18:15 - 19:00 - Main speaker - Lorraine Steyn.
19:00 - 19:30 - Networking and wrap-up.

Topic of Main Talk - Writing Better Code: helping developers make decisions

Developers make dozens of small decisions with every bit of code that they write. How do we know when we have made good decisions, and what makes code “better”. Is it just a matter of style and subjectivity?
In this presentation, I’ll show you how we can look at code objectively. Starting with architecture and code design: how much design is good, what kind of design, and other such tricky questions.
Also how to keep your code maintainable, drawing from Kent Beck’s latest book “Tidy First?” as well as many other industry opinions. I’ll summarize the key points so you don’t have to read it all (but if you’re interested, there will be some top book recommendations provided).
This talk will merge both practicality and theory. We’ll go through the checklist of how to keep code “clean” (or maintainable, if you prefer), but also delve a little into the theory behind which decisions to make when. You’ll definitely leave with a deeper understanding of what “better code” means.

Lorraine founded the software development company Khanyisa Real Systems (KRS) in 1987. The company now employs around 80 technical staff, and has delivered large bespoke projects for hundreds of clients. Lorraine is a hands-on CEO who spends 3-4 days a week working on production code with her teams, mentoring, assisting with design, and driving quality and learning. Lorraine has presented on such varied topics as Domain-Driven-Design, compassionate leadership, clean code and refactoring, women in tech, and many Agile topics dear to her heart (often based in XP practices).

Thank you to our sponsors Peach Payments, MoonPay, and OfferZen

Peach Payments make online commerce and digital payment acceptance easier and more accessible across all Africa. We believe in the potential of Africa and aim to grow into more countries. Based in Cape Town, South Africa, we work with small and large merchants in South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius to provide a complete toolkit to accept, manage and disburse payments through web and mobile. Our merchant partners include your favourite food delivery services, whether you are ordering in or using a meal kit, travel services that can help you book your next getaway adventure and even your neighbour’s side-hustle e-commerce store. For these partners and their customers, we aim to provide brilliant experiences that make it as easy as possible to facilitate online payments.

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MoonPay believes in building a world where you own your digital future, giving you control of your identity, money, property and data.
We are the market leader in end-to-end solutions simplifying access to the crypto economy for 20M+ people across 180+ countries, and trusted by iconic global brands including wallets, marketplaces, exchanges and leading web2 enterprises.

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OfferZen is an online job marketplace by developers for developers. Our mission is to help people unlock their potential by helping them build awesome software. That’s why we are connecting actively looking developers with exciting job opportunities from over 1000 companies in South Africa and the Netherlands. We flip the normal recruitment process on its head – companies reach out to candidates with upfront salary information.

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