Neal Ford
Gateway Software Symposium
St. Louis · March 3 - 5, 2006
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
Advanced Enterprise Debugging Techniques
This session discusses techniques and tools for debugging enterprise applications (without using System.out.println()!)
Clean Up Your Code: 10 Java Coding Tricks, Techniques, and Philosophies
This session delivers 10 techniques for improving your code, whether you are freshly graduated or a grizzled veteran.
SOA: Next Wave of Enterprise Development or Return of the Son of CORBA?
Is Service Oriented Architecture the next wave of distributed computing or just the same old crap in a shiny new package? This session provides an overview of what most people agree is the definition of SOA. I talk about SOA, ESB, CORBA, your MOM, and a bunch of other acronyms.
The Productive Programmer
This session shows you how to become a more productive programmer every day by using tools that you didn't know you already had.
Language-oriented Programming and Language Workbenches: Building Domain Languages atop Java
This session shows how to use Java as the building block for domain-specific languages. It discusses the next revolution in programming: language-oriented programming and the nascent tools that support it.