Neal Ford

By Neal Ford
Regular expressions should be an integral part of every developer?s toolbox, but most don?t realize what an important topic it is. Regular expressions have existed for decades, but many developers don't understand how to take full advantage of this powerful mechanism, either through command line tools and editors or in their development.

This session shows how to fully exploit regular expressions. It begins with the basic premise of how regular expressions work, then shows how to take advantage of the RegEx library built into the Java platform. This session shows how to use wildcards, escape characters, meta-tags, character class operators, look-aheads/look-behinds, and how to use the greedy operators effectively. It covers regular expressions from the beginning through to advanced usage, both in Java and in tools that support regular expressions. This session is packed with real examples of regular expressions (including a game show with no fabulous prizes).

Key Session Points:

Common Regex mistakes

By Neal Ford
This session describes JRuby, the 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. It covers the basics of programming with JRuby and examples of how to integrate it into existing Java projects.


Like hamburger & fries and turkey & dressing, JRuby allows you to harness the awesome power of Ruby in your Java projects. This session describes the origins, capabilities, and limitations of JRuby, the 100% pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. This session also demonstrates some areas where it makes sense to mixin Ruby and Java code: Rails on Java, testing, and dynamic programming. JRuby is a powerful implementation of Polyglot Programming, and this session shows you how to leverage this cutting-edge concept.

Session Topics:

• JRuby's origins
• Calling Java from Ruby
• Calling Ruby from Java
• Limitations and pitfalls
• Example usage
• Rails on Java
• Testing
• Dynamic programming
• The future

By Neal Ford
What does code + methodology have to do with one another? Everything! Agile projects focus on delivering working code, and tools exist to allow you to verify some quality metrics for your code. This session is a survey of tools and metrics that allow you to determine the quality of your code and strategies to "wire it" into your agile project.


Agile projects focus on delivering code. The responsibility for the quality of that code lies with developers. Yet most developers have a poor sense of how to gauge the quality of code, both during development and forensically. This talk lives on the boundary between what is important in agile projects and ways to verify code quality. It is both a survey of tools and metrics and strategies for proactively applying these techniques to ongoing projects. I talk about the Hawthorne effect, analysis tools (both byte and source code), useful metrics, tools for generating metrics, and how to analyze raw data into actionable tasks.

Session Topics:

• The Hawthorne Effect
• How Agility and Metrics Feed Each Other
• Analysis Tools
• FindBugs
• PMD/CPD
• Testing Metrics
• Cyclomatic Complexity
• Chidamber and Kemerer Object-oriented Metrics
• JDepend
• Code Change Risk Analyzer and Predictor for Java
• Panopticode
• Tools

By Neal Ford
You can read books about Agile projects, but you must consult real-world experience to really understand the dynamics of agile project management. This session discusses agile management topics including estimation, project tracking, and useful metrics (and how to obtain them). And just a little about Mingle, the agile project tracking tool from ThoughtWorks.


OK, sure, you can read the XP Explained book. Now what? Agile project management in the real world requires understanding of not just the practices but why they work. This talk delves into several topics relevant to agile project management, including estimation, project tracking, accurate project metrics (and the practices that make them possible). This talk is designed to describe some of the nuances required to handle real agile projects, along with a demonstration of some of the artifacts ThoughtWorks uses to track projects (the most elaborate spreadsheet you've ever seen!). And, towards the end, I show how our experience has culminated into Mingle, the agile project tracking tool from ThoughtWorks with skinnable religion.

By Neal Ford
Most developers think that "TDD" stands for Test-driven Development. But it really should stand for "Test-driven Design". Rigorously using TDD makes your code much better in multiple ways.

This session demonstrates how stringent TDD improves the structure of your code. I discuss TDD as a technique for vetting consumer calls, using mock objects to understand complex interactions between collaborators, and some discussions of improved code metrics yielded by TDD. This session shows that TDD is much more than testing: it fundamentally makes your code better at multiple levels.

By Neal Ford
The Gang of Four book should have been entitled "Palliatives for Statically Typed Languages", because the recipes it provides are cumbersome solutions to the problems it poses. Using powerful languages makes the solutions in the GoF book look hopelessly complicated. This session shows how to solve the same problems concisely, elegantly, and with far fewer lines of code using the facilities of dynamic languages.

The Gang of Four book was actually 2 books: a nomenclature describing common software problems and a recipe book for solutions. The vocabulary they defined is still useful. The recipes are a disaster! Dynamic languages (like Groovy and Ruby) have powerful meta-programming facilities far beyond statically typed languages. It turns out that many of the structural design patterns in the Gang of Four book and beyond are much easier to solve with meta-programming. This session compares and contrasts the "traditional" approach of design patterns with a more nuanced meta-programming approach. Using language features creates cleaner abstractions with fewer lines of code and little or no additional structure. This session shows one of the many reasons that dynamic languages are such a hot topic.

By Neal Ford
Ruby is the revenge of the Smalltalkers. Not since Smalltalk has a language had such powerful meta-programming facilities. While this may seem like a minor feature, it turns out that surgical meta-programming allows solutions to problems that are clearer, more concise, more maintainable, and take orders of magnitudes fewer lines of code.

This session shows one of the reasons that JRuby is the most
powerful mainstream language today: meta-programming. It shows tons of
meta-programming techniques in Ruby, including open classes, the shadow
meta-class, defining methods, method_ & const_missing, dynamically
adding and removing mixins, and more. And each of these comes with an
example that actually makes sense!

Session Topics

• Modules
• Structs
• Freezing
• Messages and Dynamic Invocation
• The Shadow Meta-class
• Code as Objects
• Delegation
• Open Classes
• Aspects
• Missing!
• Const
• Method
• Reflection
• Mixology

By Neal Ford
There's the perfect world, and then there's the world you have to live in. Lots of organizations would like to reap the benefits of Agile development techniques but don't know how to get started. This session discusses the key benefits you can derive from Agile software development so that you can decide for yourself how many agile techniques will work within your organization.

I discuss project planning and estimation, how to benefit from pair programming when you aren't allowed to pair, how to measure your progress, and other project milestones. Agile software development isn't just an unrelated set of activities, it is a discipline. Once you understand the component parts of the discipline, you can apply them to your less-than-agile world.

By Neal Ford
This session demonstrates how stringent TDD improves the structure of your code.

I discuss TDD as a technique for vetting consumer calls, using mock objects to understand complex interactions between collaborators, and some discussions of improved code metrics yielded by TDD. This session shows that TDD is much more than testing: it fundamentally makes your code better at multiple levels.

By Neal Ford
Developers from the 1980s would be shocked at how inefficiently developers use their computers because of the advent of graphical operating systems. This talk describes how to reclaim productivity afforded by intelligent use of command lines and other ways of accelerating your interaction with the computer and bending computers to do your bidding. Stop working so hard for your computer!

In The Productive Programmer, I identify 4 principles of productivity: acceleration, focus, automation, and canonicality. This session defines the principles and describes their use, but the primary focus of this talk is on real-world examples of how you can use these principles to make yourself a more productive programmer. Acceleration covers ways to speed up development by taking command of your computer. This includes keyboard shortcuts (including ways to learn them and make better use of them) in both IntelliJ and Eclipse. Focus describes how you can utilize your environment (both physical and computer) to greatly enhance your productivity. Canonicality (the DRY principle from The Pragmatic Programmer) discourages repeating artifacts in projects. This talk shows effective ways to avoid this repetition. I show examples of creating DRY documentation, O/R mapping, database schemas, and development environments. Automation refers to making the computer do more work for you. This talk includes tons of examples, all culled from real-world projects

By Neal Ford
Provides a punchlist to ensure your shiny new web application is up to spec.

When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation. I cover things like where import your JavaScript and CSS, how to handle images so that they are aggressively cached, how much you should care about XHTML, and lots more. This talk will give you a fit and finish check list you can apply to your shiny new web application to see if it's up to spec.

By Neal Ford
Software is fundamentally a communications game, and good skills differentiates between good and great developers. This session describes communication techniques and skills to people who skipped English 102 to hack some code. I talk about effective communication techniques for presentations, documentation, memos, and how to sell your technical ideas to a non-technical crowd.

Software is fundamentally a communications game, and good skills differentiates between good and great developers. This session describes communication techniques and skills to people who skipped English 102 to hack some code. I talk about effective communication techniques for presentations, documentation, memos, and how to sell your technical ideas to a non-technical crowd.

By Neal Ford
Most of the software world has realized that BDUF (Big Design Up Front) doesn't work well in software. But lots of developers struggle with this notion when it applies to architecture and design. Surely you can't just start coding, right? You need some level of understanding before you can start work. This session describes the current thinking about emergent design & evolutionary architecture, including both proactive (test-driven development) and reactive (refactoring, composed method) approaches to discovering design. The goal of this talk is to provide nomenclature, strategies, and techniques for allowing design to emerge from projects as they proceed, keeping you code in sync with the problem domain.

Most of the software world has realized that BDUF (Big Design Up Front) doesn't work well in software. But lots of developers struggle with this notion when it applies to architecture and design. Surely you can't just start coding, right? You need some level of understanding before you can start work. This session describes the current thinking about emergent design & evolutionary architecture, including both proactive (test-driven development) and reactive (refactoring, composed method) approaches to discovering design. The goal of this talk is to provide nomenclature, strategies, and techniques for allowing design to emerge from projects as they proceed, keeping you code in sync with the problem domain.

By Neal Ford
BRING YOUR LAPTOP WITH YOU, BUT A LAPTOP ISN'T REQUIRED! Reading and hearing about agile practices is one thing, but actually doing it is completely different. This session puts you to work in an agile fashion, applying agile developer practices.

Reading and hearing about agile practices is one thing, but actually doing it is completely different. This session puts you to work in an agile fashion, applying agile developer practices. During this session, we're going to take a problem and iteratively develop the solution, using test-driven development, pair programming, retrospectives, pair rotation, and other agile development techniques. We should be able to get through about 3 20-minute iterations during the 90 minutes, giving you a hands-on feel for real agile development. If you have a laptop, bring it, but only half the class needs one, so if you don't have a laptop, don't let it discourage you. Come see what it's like to work on a real agile project, even if it's just 90 minutes.

By Neal Ford
This talk covers language techniques in Java, Groovy, and Ruby on how and why to create DSLs, and also covers the very important topic of implicit context, and how language constructs can allow you to write less verbose and more expressive code.

Domain specific languages have been the Next Big Thing for years now, but they have quietly started penetrating the development world. This talk covers language techniques in Java, Groovy, and Ruby on how and why to create DSLs. This session demonstrates with motivation for converting APIs into DSLs, and various patterns, anti-patterns, and best practices for how to achieve the optimum effect. This talk also covers the very important topic of implicit context, and how language constructs can allow you to write less verbose and more expressive code.

By Neal Ford
Refactoring is a fine academic exercise in the perfect world, but we don't really live there. Even with the best intentions, projects build up technical debt and crufty bad things. This session covers refactoring in the real world, at both the atomic level (how to refactor towards composed method and the single level of abstraction principle) to larger project strategies for multi-day refactoring efforts. This talk provides practical strategies for real projects to effectively refactor your code.

Refactoring is a fine academic exercise in the perfect world, but we don't really live there. Even with the best intentions, projects build up technical debt and crufty bad things. This session covers refactoring in the real world, at both the atomic level (how to refactor towards composed method and the single level of abstraction principle) to larger project strategies for multi-day refactoring efforts. This talk provides practical strategies for real projects to effectively refactor your code.

By Neal Ford
Unit testing seems to a lot of managers and developers like pure overhead, but professionally responsible developers know that it is one of the keys to quality. This session covers a bunch of small tools that makes testing easier & faster. I talk about tools like Infinitest, Jester, MockRunner, Hamcrest, Groovy, RSpec/EasyB, Selenium, and others. While none of these tools is elaborate enough for it's own session, together they add up to more than the sum of the parts. This session shows tools and strategies to streamline testing, making easier and more palatable for both managers and developers.

Unit testing seems to a lot of managers and developers like pure overhead, but professionally responsible developers know that it is one of the keys to quality. This session covers a bunch of small tools that makes testing easier & faster. I talk about tools like Infinitest, Jester, MockRunner, Hamcrest, Groovy, RSpec/EasyB, Selenium, and others. While none of these tools is elaborate enough for it's own session, together they add up to more than the sum of the parts. This session shows tools and strategies to streamline testing, making easier and more palatable for both managers and developers.

By Neal Ford
Judicious use of metrics improves the quality of your code. But interpreting metrics presents a challenge. You have a list of numbers for a project - what does it mean? And what does it tell me about the health of the project overall? This sessions shows how to produce visualizations for software metrics, making them easier to understand and more valuable. It covers metrics at the individual method level all the way up to the overall architecture of the application. This isn't just a talk about how some tools produce visualizations: this session shows you how to generate your own visualizations, allowing you to customize it to the level in information density that shows real value on your project. I show how to produce projected graphs from dependencies, heat-maps for cyclomatic complexity and code coverage, using XSLT to extract visual information from XML configuration documents, and others. Metrics can't help you if you can't understand them. By creating visualizations, it helps leverage metrics to make your code better.

Judicious use of metrics improves the quality of your code. But interpreting metrics presents a challenge. You have a list of numbers for a project - what does it mean? And what does it tell me about the health of the project overall? This sessions shows how to produce visualizations for software metrics, making them easier to understand and more valuable. It covers metrics at the individual method level all the way up to the overall architecture of the application. This isn't just a talk about how some tools produce visualizations: this session shows you how to generate your own visualizations, allowing you to customize it to the level in information density that shows real value on your project. I show how to produce projected graphs from dependencies, heat-maps for cyclomatic complexity and code coverage, using XSLT to extract visual information from XML configuration documents, and others. Metrics can't help you if you can't understand them. By creating visualizations, it helps leverage metrics to make your code better.

By Neal Ford
When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation. I cover things like where import your JavaScript and CSS, how to handle images so that they are aggressively cached, how much you should care about XHTML, and lots more. This talk will give you a fit and finish check list you can apply to your shiny new web application to see if it's up to spec.

When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation. I cover things like where import your JavaScript and CSS, how to handle images so that they are aggressively cached, how much you should care about XHTML, and lots more. This talk will give you a fit and finish check list you can apply to your shiny new web application to see if it's up to spec.

By Neal Ford
When you were hired by your current employer, you may think it's because of your winning personality, your dazzling smile, or your encyclopedic knowledge of [insert technology here]. But it's not. You were hired for your ability to sit and concentrate for long periods of time to solve problems, then placed in an environment where it's utterly impossible to do that! Who decides that, despite overwhelming evidence that it's bad for productivity and people hate it, that you must sit in a cubicle? The furniture police! This keynote describes the frustrations of modern knowledge workers in their quest to actually get some work done, and solutions for how to gird yourself against all those distractions. I talk about environments, coding, acceleration, automation, and avoiding repetition as ways to defeat the mid-guided attempts to sap your ability to produce good work. And I give you ways to go on the lam from the furniture police and ammunition to fight back!


When you were hired by your current employer, you may think it's because of your winning personality, your dazzling smile, or your encyclopedic knowledge of [insert technology here]. But it's not. You were hired for your ability to sit and concentrate for long periods of time to solve problems, then placed in an environment where it's utterly impossible to do that! Who decides that, despite overwhelming evidence that it's bad for productivity and people hate it, that you must sit in a cubicle? The furniture police! This keynote describes the frustrations of modern knowledge workers in their quest to actually get some work done, and solutions for how to gird yourself against all those distractions. I talk about environments, coding, acceleration, automation, and avoiding repetition as ways to defeat the mid-guided attempts to sap your ability to produce good work. And I give you ways to go on the lam from the furniture police and ammunition to fight back!