Neal Ford
Northern Virginia Software Symposium
Reston · April 25 - 27, 2008
Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler
Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.
Presentations
Evolutionary SOA
This session demonstrates that “Agility” and “SOA” complement each other quite well. Just because SOA is buzz-word compliant doesn't mean that you should throw good practices out the window. This session demonstrates how you can apply the principles of agility to building highly complex distributed enterprises.
Test Driven Design
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.
Keynote: Ancient Philosophers & Blowhard Jamborees
It turns out that ancient philosophers knew a lot about software – did you know that Plato defined object-oriented programming? This keynote applies old lessons to new problems and old problems to new lessons. It describes why SOA is so hard, and why people in your company make bone-headed decisions. What other keynote includes Rube Goldberg, Aristotle, Dave Thomas, and Chindia?
Introduction to JRuby
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.
Meta-programming JRuby for Fun & Profit
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.
Regular Expressions in Java
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.