New England Software Symposium
September 10 - 12, 2010 - Boston, MA
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Complexity Theory and Software Development
Some systems are too large to be understood entirely by any one human mind. They are composed of a diverse array of individual components capable of interacting with each other and adapting to a changing environment. As systems, they produce behavior that differs in kind from the behavior of their components. Complexity Theory is an emerging discipline that seeks to describe such phenomena previously encountered in biology, sociology, economics, and other disciplines.
Beyond new ways of looking at ant colonies, fashion trends, and national economies, complexity theory promises powerful insights to software development. The Internet—perhaps the most valuable piece of computing infrastructure of the present day—may fit the description of a complex system. Large corporate organizations in which developers are employed have complex characteristics. In this session, we'll explore what makes a complex system, what advantages complexity has to offer us, and how to harness these in the systems we build.
About Tim Berglund
Tim is a full-stack generalist and passionate teacher who loves working with people as much as he loves to code. He believes the best developer is one who is well-informed of specifics and can also make deep connections between software development and the broader world. He has recently been exploring non-relational data stores, why professionalized product management is a global suboptimization, and of course everything related to Git. He does not really believe that it is possible to teach, but rather believes that it is his responsibility to create an environment in which people can learn.
He is also a poet, having composed and produced companion videos for Oh, The Methods You'll Compose and The Maven, with another project currently in the works. If you've been in his Git classes, you've seen some famous poems make their way into the world's best version control system.
Tim is a speaker internationally and on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour in the United States, and is co-president of the Denver Open Source User Group, author of the Gradle Liquibase Plugin, the maintainer of the Ratpack web framework, co-presenter of the best-selling O'Reilly Git Master Class, co-author of Building and Testing with Gradle, a member of the O'Reilly Expert Network, and a member of the GigOM Pro Analyst Network. He occasionally blogs at timberglund.com.
He lives in Littleton, CO, USA with the wife of his youth and their three children.
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