Testing, Docs for Devs, and a Career Advice AMA

We're back! Back at Little O'Neills (formerly The Old Market Tavern), and back with another three cracking speakers for an evening of talks to tickle your technical brains. We're looking forward to welcoming Differs old and new.

Talks:

Testing: Why Are We Doing This Again?
A frank look at software testing from a fullstack perspective. This talk explores what actually matters in testing – building confidence in our code while maintaining the ability to change it when it comes into touch with the real world.

RocketScience.GG's Harri Taylor shares some thoughts on different testing approaches, why flaky tests undermine trust, and finding the balance between over and under-testing. We'll discuss how testing needs vary across contexts, from game development and frontend apps to microservices and monoliths, and when it's perfectly reasonable to delete tests (your git history won't judge you... much.) Come along for an honest conversation about testing philosophy and pragmatism in the real world, where sometimes "good enough" is exactly that. RocketScience are hiring, BTW :)

Docs for Devs
Whether it's an open-source API, passion project, or a legacy application created by a large team, documentation is a key element for maintaining your software projects. In this talk Josh Gill of Amentum will voice his thoughts as a Junior-level Engineer on Documentation, the various tools and processes that exist to create and maintain it, as well as it's place in Software Engineering.

Career Advice AMA
From being a technical individual contributor, a consultant, an entrepreneur, and a leader in a big tech corporate, Steph Locke has collected the war wounds. In this open forum, Steph will give a quick potted career history and then open up the floor for questions and discussions to help the people in the room think about where they want to go in their careers and identify some tangible steps to make progress.

Agenda:
18:00: Official start time — feel free to turn up beforehand and order something to eat or drink. We'll be in the room upstairs.
18:20: Talks begin.
20:00 Official end — feel free to stay around and socialise.
Unified Diff is brought to you by Bipsync. We thank the very generous Unify Talent for their kind sponsorship of this event.

And remember, we need speakers for the next one! If you'd like to speak at a future event (September is already filling up!) please let Heather or Craig know.