Writing on Trisha Gee

Getting Started with Aeron

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Getting started with Aeron is hard.

There, I said it. It took a lot for me to admit. My job as a developer advocate has been learning new technology and using it. I’m good at that. And now I have Claude to help me, and a whole team of people, and the documentation and code samples. And yet… I still struggled. I worked with the guy who created it. I worked with him when I wrote the blog posts for the Disrupter, Aeron’s precursor. And I still don’t know what I’m doing.

The Ugly Phase

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My husband and I have found a new way to get through tough times (and I don’t just mean relationship-wise!). It’s about recognising the Ugly Phase and learning to accept it.

Let me explain what the Ugly Phase is. To do that, I need to tell you how Isra (my husband) discovered it. Bear with me.

There are only opportunities.

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When I worked at Ford as a shiny new graduate in the early noughties, they told me “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions”. They also said, never phrase anything as a “problem” but as an “opportunity”. The cynical senior who worked on our team told me it was because Ford had been sued too many times and that we should never document known problems because it would end up in court. An important learning point for 21-year-old me.

Hello burnout my old friend...

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I am struggling.

There. I said it.

Yes, I’m middle-aged. Yes, I have kids. Yes, I have an aging parent. Yes, I’m building a house. (shhhhhh (yes I’m perimenopausal)).

But it’s not just that (just! Ha!).

I want to help people. I LIKE helping people. I like learning. I like trying new things. And I feel compelled to add new skills to my CV/resume.

Which is to say…. hello burnout. Again. Sigh.

IDE tips to save you from disaster

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m working on creating a training course for IntelliJ IDEA (I’ve been working on it for a while now, I don’t really want to talk to much about it because I’m not sure when I’ll actually deliver it). Anyway, as I was thinking through Features You Really Need To Know, I realised that it’s not really about code completion and code generation, it’s about those features that will get you out of a big, deep hole that you’ve dug yourself into.

Staying Relevant in the Tech Industry

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My latest video for the Continuous Delivery YouTube channel is about staying up to date in tech. For the last couple of years, all anyone can talk about is AI, and it can make you feel like you’re becoming irrelevant if you’re not learning or using AI. Don’t worry, this is a feeling that is pretty much constant in tech, and is not specifically related to the hype around AI. So I dusted off an old talk, which was based on an older blog post, about how to stay up to date in technology, and condensed it to a twelve-minute YouTube video (transcript below, if you prefer to read). Enjoy.

Getting Started with Presenting

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Context and Background

It’s currently 2024, and I was looking for some “Getting Started with DevRel” content from my blog. All my posts are in a GitHub repo/IntelliJ IDEA Project first, and then ported into WordPress at some point. Searching my IntelliJ project I found this post, which apparently I wrote in 2020 and never published! What’s more confusing is that it’s based off something I wrote in 2014, so it was written 10 years ago and then I failed to publish it twice.

So, with that in mind I’m going to publish it as-is and hope that there are some useful bits and pieces in there for someone. Better than having it stuck in my drafts folder forever.

Welcome to 2020, all over again…

I have loads of advice for aspiring speakers, which is lucky because I get asked about how to get started (or how I got started) all the time. I found an email I sent to someone absolutely years ago (2014) and thought it useful enough to dust off and post. It’s interesting to see my mindset back then because now I’ve largely forgotten what it was like in the early days.

The timing is not great, since in these Coronavirus times no-one’s going to or presenting at conferences, but I firmly believe that with all these virtual events and conferences there’s a much lower barrier to entry to speaking, and that now is exactly the right time to start presenting if it’s something you’ve ever had on your wish list.

“I was hoping I could get some advice off you as I’m starting to look at ways to get out and speak a little bit more at events. Would you have some insights from how you started?”

Reading Code Is Hard, and tips to improve

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s video for Dave Farley’s Continuous Delivery YouTube channel is me ranting about why reading code sucks, and offering some advice on how to improve.

“Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty….” https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

The original idea for this video is from my presentation Reading Code Is Harder Than Writing It, and from my blog post Reading Code is a Skill, an older post which has only become more relevant in the modern age of AI.

Flaky Fashion

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

During the last four weeks I’ve been to a few conferences. Sick of wearing the same t-shirts and jeans, I’ve been experimenting with different outfits. By far the most successful t-shirt (yes, I know, I said I was sick of wearing t-shirts) was a new one I designed for the Develocity Developer Advocates:

IMAGE DPE Summit

Gradle might get around to making these, but fear not! You do not need to wait. You can have your own made up, just like I did. We’re modelling two different types from the same source.

Trisha's Events, Autumn 2024

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today I’m experimenting with something new. Given how much I’m working with videos these days, I thought I’d do a short video about the conferences and events I’ll be at between now and the end of 2024.

https://youtu.be/Yy_s7VUiNm8

If you’re more of a reading person than a watching person, here’s the TL;DW:

19 September - XConf Europe, Barcelona. Keynote: Are your tests slowing you down? (Discount Code: XConfTrisha20)
24-25 September - DPE Summit, San Francisco
2-4 October - GOTO Copenhagen. Developer Productivity with IntelliJ IDEA; 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know.
7-11 October - Devoxx Belgium: Productivity is Messing Around and Having Fun; Developer Productivity Engineering: What’s in it for me?.
14-16 November - TRGCON24, Madrid: Developer Advocacy: What, Why and How?
4-13 December - YOW, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney: Developer Productivity with IntelliJ IDEA (Discount Code: gee-15)

Remember, you can check out my Upcoming Events at any time.

Are Developer Productivity and Developer Joy opposites?

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A few glasses of fizzy were consumed during the JetBrains party at Devoxx Belgium last year:

Holly: You do presentations about productivity, and about developer happiness, and I do presentations about developer joy. We should do a presentation together!

Me: Yes! What a fantastic idea! Two titans of the London Java Community co-presenting on a topic that excites us both!

// insert screenshot of tipsy notes

And there you have it. That’s how presentations are born. We planned to give it at DevoxxUK, scheduled to be in May, so we had loooooads of time to prepare it(1).

In which we discover the audience really matters

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I ran a poll asking my followers which content to produce for Dave’s Continuous Delivery YouTube channel. I found it interesting, but I guess not all that surprising, that the results depend upon who you ask.

This is Twitter (no I will NOT call it by its new name, actually I want to call it what my youngest does, which is “Baby bird Twitter”):

This is Mastodon, with a similar pattern and a similar number of responses

Flaky tests are poisoning your productivity

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I freaking HATE flaky tests.

The first time I worked in an environment that had real Continuous Integration with Actual Automated Tests that Actually Ran, it was like… freedom. We literally got the green light that our new code was working as expected, and that any changes we made hadn’t broken anything. And refactoring… before then, I don’t think I had ever really refactored anything. Even a simple rename was fraught with danger, you never knew if reflection or some sort of odd log-file parsing was dependent upon specific class or method names. With a comprehensive suite of unit, acceptance and performance tests, we had this blissful safety net that would tell us “Everything Is OK” after we’d done simple or extensive refactoring.

What on earth is a Build Scan, and why do I care?

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever run a Gradle build that failed and seen this message?

I remember the first time I saw this message. I was having a particularly difficult time with solving my build issues, so I did what was suggested. After I published the build scan, I saw something like this:

Actually it probably didn’t look like that, because my experience was years ago and the build scan has evolved. But whatever.

Working Smarter, not Harder

Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for eight and a half years. Inspired by this tweet from Ceora, I’m finally doing it.

I have a question for parents in tech, especially moms.

How has having children impacted your career?

I wanna hear the good, the bad and the ugly. Tell me whatever you’re comfortable sharing :P
— ceora🌸🌺 (@ceeoreo_) May 15, 2024

The most immediate impact having a baby had on my career is I needed to work much smarter not harder. Babies (and children) take up all that so-called free time, and and almost all of your not-free-time, that you used to have.

Time Management for Parents

Sun, 19 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a 3000 word blog post in response to a Tweet about how having kids changed my career (which in retrospect probably doesn’t even answer the question). So I decided to pull this section out into its own post.

So here are my Top Tips For Time Management And Planning for Working Parents.

Calendars. Allllll the calendars

I have three computer/cloud-based calendars¹ (well, more really but three that I maintain) - work; personal; and joint with my husband. The personal has stuff I don’t need to clutter our shared stuff with, although it’s often rammed with duplicate things - my Calendly account is off Personal so I have to copy key stuff into it if I want Calendly to actually be correct². Joint has, well joint stuff, but also things like blocks of time where I have work meetings, so my husband knows that he can’t schedule anything that needs me during those times. We have to put the kids’ rubbish in there too, like their after-school stuff. The third is work, which is the simplest I guess, but I also make sure I have school pick-up and drop-off blocked in there so people don’t schedule meetings at the times where I’m responsible for those. On my work calendar, I also block out time for workouts if my exercise time overlaps with work hours (my husband and I alternate workout/school drop off in the mornings so when I do drop-off I still need some time to work out).

Summer Reading 2023

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m about to jet off on my sunny* summer holidays, so it’s a good time to leave you with my recommended reading and learning. Are they all my books and content? Yes. But I do have discounts and deals for them, so that’s something, right?

Working With Code in IntelliJ IDEA (Online course)

I’ve just released a Brand New online course on LeanPub, Working With Code in IntelliJ IDEA. If you want to step through the most helpful features for writing code with IntelliJ IDEA, this is the course for you. We have a special introductory price if you click on this link: https://leanpub.com/c/workingwithcodeinintellijidea/c/eBRBFWYIyek8.

Is testing getting in the way of your productivity?

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m working on a new talk which aims to address some of the issues that face developers when it comes to running automated tests. Please take my super-scientific survey so that I can take a look at the real issues facing developers, and structure my talk around them. Thanks!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TXSDVH5

Why I prefer trunk-based development

Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Why I prefer trunk-based development

These days, distributed version control systems like Git have “won the war” of version control. One of the arguments I used to hear when DVCSs were gaining traction was around how easy it is to branch and merge with a VCS like Git. However, I’m a big fan of Trunk-Based Development (TBD), and I want to tell you why.

With trunk-based development, all developers work on a single branch (e.g. ‘main’). You might have read or heard Martin Fowler or Dave Farley talking about it. It’s when I was working with Dave (around about the time that Git was rapidly becoming the “go to” version control system) that I really saw the benefits of trunk-based development for the team, particularly in an environment that was pioneering Continuous Delivery - Dave was writing the book with Jez Humble while I worked with him.

What should every Java programmer know?

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Preface to 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. Plutarch

What should every Java programmer know? It depends. It depends on who you ask, why you ask, and when you ask. There are at least as many suggestions as there are points of view. In a language, platform, ecosystem, and community that affects the software and lives of so many people, and has done so from one century to the next, from one core to many, from megabytes to gigabytes, it depends on more than one could ever hope to cover in a single book by a single author.

New! Landing page for Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One of the things you have to do as a self published author is marketing. I mean, obviously you have to do EVERYTHING as a self published author, that’s the thing.

I’ve just finished creating a landing page for Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA. It’s one of those things that should be “easy” and “quick”, and yet after all the work we put into the book, we never got around to it.

Gradle Gradle Gradle, with Gradle we're going to play

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I know I owe you a blog post¹, and today I actually have the time, energy and inclination to write it. It’s not often those three factors coincide.

I have already done the Great Reveal about the job I am doing now that I’m no longer at JetBrains.

https://twitter.com/trisha_gee/status/1617537037460021249?s=20&t=KotPpDu4cZmQj9UKuT6zvA

The question I wanted to answer (if only to remind myself later in life!) is why?

Firstly, why did I leave JetBrains? I loved that job. I loved IntelliJ IDEA. That was by far the longest I’ve ever worked anywhere. But after seven years, it was time to learn some new stuff. I stayed so long at JetBrains because, even doing the same job for that time, I was constantly learning: I learnt more about how to do this developer advocacy thing; I learnt a LOT more about IntelliJ IDEA, which is by far my favourite piece of software for literally anything (we wrote the book with it, and I’m writing this blog with it); it was a great way to learn much more about Java, and stay up to date with a language which is now moving very fast.

Tools and Processes for Collaborating on a Book Remotely

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My last post was about the history of writing Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA. Which was mostly for my own gratification, to help me realise just how much time and energy went into it. What people mostly ask me about, though, is the tools we used to write the book and the process we used to collaborate.

The tools

We wanted to use Leanpub to publish the book, because the royalties are generous, and we felt we could manage everything ourselves. It turns out to have another really nice benefit too, which is we can release updates to the book as soon as we need to, which helps a lot when the product moves as fast as IntelliJ IDEA.

Writing A Book Is Hard

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hey Helen, I know you were disappointed you missed out on a chance to contribute to 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know, do you want to write a book with me? Trisha Gee, Spring 2020

That’s how it started.

It’s that easy.

[Maniacal laughter in the background]

I have long wanted to write a book. It didn’t really matter what type of book (novel, technical) or on which topic (I have opinions on everything). I wanted My Name On The Front Of A Book. I wanted to be An Author. I knew Helen also wanted to be An Author, and that by working together we could keep each other accountable and actually do this.

What’s Next for Trisha?

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Right. It’s about time I started looking for my next job/gig/source-of-income. I’ll be honest, 9 months of sabbatical has not been as restful as I had hoped, but apparently writing two books and taking on the ownership of a restaurant are not restful activities. Who knew?

Anyway this blog post is because it’s too hard to explain in 140 characters (OK fine 280, but I’m old school) what I’m looking for. There are three main paths I’m exploring:

It's not you, it's them

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s not you, it’s them.

I believe in asking for help, for being vulnerable about the things we don’t know, especially if we’ve been in industry a long time. We can’t possibly know it all, and it’s important to normalise that.

So I wrote a blog post about the thing I was struggling with. Yes, it also had the lovely positive of asking The Internet to solve my problem.

Shocked I was, shocked (no, I was not) to receive responses suggesting that perhaps I was a bit rubbish as a developer.

"Simple" Network Connections with Java - a problem

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been playing with NIO for network stuff to see if/how I want to update the code for Head First Java 3rd Edition. The original code used Sockets and Readers/Writers, and I thought there must be a more “modern” way to do this so I’ve tried updating it a few different ways. I got it working using SocketChannel and ByteBuffer (eventually!), but the ByteBuffer stuff is just too fiddly to use to teach people basic network IO in Java. After turning to Twitter for the answers (Twitter Driven Development) I had what looked like a promising hybrid approach.

End of an Era

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow, 22nd December 2021, is my last day at JetBrains.

I can’t believe I’ve been here a whole seven years! I’ve never stayed anywhere even half that amount of time, I usually jump jobs every 1-2 years. I spent 4 years at LMAX, but I did have a tiny break in the middle to go and work for ThoughtWorks for 3 months.

State of Spring 2021

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I got a chance to look at this year’s State of Spring Report from VMware Tanzu, and I’ve summarized what I’ve found interesting so my readers can get the TL;DR (from my opinionated position).

Spring clearly continues to go from strength to strength. I started using it back in about 2005, which seems crazy because that’s now over 15 years ago (in fact, one of my very earliest blog posts was about Spring). Spring is still not only super popular, but also feels really modern. I’m really impressed at how they’ve managed to evolve while maintaining this legacy.

Dealing with Legacy Code in OpenJDK (JEP 416)

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just seen JEP 416: Reimplement Core Reflection with Method Handles has been promoted to Candidate status (“Candidate: Accepted for inclusion in the OpenJDK roadmap”), and thought I’d find out a bit more about it.

The JEP is an implementation change, not an API change - so those of us who use reflection won’t see any changes in the names of the methods we use or any new features. My first thought was that the driving force behind this JEP is performance - “everyone knows” reflection is slow, and I assume Method Handles (introduced in Java 7) are faster (based on absolutely zero experience or benchmarking on my part).

What Is Leadership Really?

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

pic.twitter.com/ElrgOGCPyz
— CSM Rachel W Terrell (@TheeWendyT) May 15, 2021

I fixed it for you:

Do we need comments in our code?

Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dalia and I (and a number of others!) had a conversation on our first Twitter Spaces session about “Comments: Good or Bad?”. I argued for minimising the comments we have in our code, and in this blog post I want to explore how to do this in more detail.

I think this is one of those topics that can be framed badly. People who argue for comments are, rightly, arguing that one should be able to understand what the code does by reading it, and that adding comments can aid that readability. It might seem to people who feel this way that those who argue against comments are arguing against readable code, that are coming from a position of “I don’t need no stinkin’ comments, I’m smart enough to understand my code”.

2020

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

OK so here we go, my almost-regular annual roundup. Of 2020. Deep breath.

Right so first things first, obviously 2020 SUCKED. For everyone. Anything I say that’s negative is not meant to be “oh poor me I had it worse than anyone” and anything positive is all about focusing on the positives, I hope I don’t make anyone feel weird about good shit happening in a horrible year.

So caveats and disclaimers up-front:

None of my close circle of friends or family died or was hospitalised with Covid. Yes, friends of friends, family of friends, and some people in my much wider circle of acquaintances and friends. I consider myself extremely lucky.
I also got very lucky with how old my kids currently are - old enough to be fairly independent (compared to a baby), young enough that school is not mandatory for them.
I’m also very fortunate in my working situation. I’ve been working remotely for 8 years already, and my company is a) extremely caring about its employees and b) in a financial situation to be able to support them.

How to start?

Upgrading a Maven, Spring Boot and JavaFX application

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been migrating all my JavaFX applications to Java 15 / JavaFX 15.0.1 to see if there are any pain points or gotchas to be aware of. I particularly wanted to understand how Maven and Gradle handle JavaFX, and how to successfully build and run the applications in IntelliJ IDEA.

In this blog post I explore the steps taking to upgrade a Spring Boot/Maven/JavaFX application.

Upgrading a Modular Gradle JavaFX Application

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You might think, particularly given the order in which I have posted these blog posts, that I tackled the easiest application first when I decided to upgrade my JavaFX applications. But no. Because I like to live life on Hard Mode.

I spent two full days last week once again tackling the on-going tech debt I had with a Modular JavaFX application. And I won! Yay! So here’s my experience report.

Upgrading a Gradle JavaFX Application

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m helping out a bit with an IntelliJ IDEA Live Stream on JavaFX, and I used that as an excuse to refresh my JavaFX knowledge. One of the things I did was make sure I upgraded all my existing applications to the latest versions of everything and make sure they work as expected.

I have what is now quite an old demo application, originally designed to showcase Java 8 features (watch the live demo and find out more). Since JavaFX was moved into the JDK in Java 8, I decided to use JavaFX as the UI. In fact, it’s this demo that was the basis for all my later JavaFX applications, including the Spring Boot one.

I haven’t done much with this for a loooong time, but it turns out I have been periodically updating dependencies and trying to make sure it all compiles. I highly recommend taking the time to do this at least once a year! It turns out that because I’ve been updating dependencies for the last 3-4 years that it wasn’t that painful to bring it right up to date. In fact, I did it in less than 30 minutes!

Creating JavaFX Applications

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This week we’re doing a Live Stream on JavaFX, and I wanted to use that opportunity to refresh my JavaFX knowledge.

I wanted to investigate two areas in particular:

How do the changes in Java 11 (when JavaFX was moved out of the JDK) impact JavaFX applications?
How do I get a modern (Java 15) JavaFX application working as expected in IntelliJ IDEA (using either Maven or Gradle as the build tool)?

I now have six different applications that showcase JavaFX!

Who's "Allowed" To Review Code?

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Guess what? A conversation I was having on Twitter got me excited enough to blog again. Perhaps reading Twitter isn’t such a depressing waste of time after all.

The problem with code reviews is that it is too easy to end to end up with code targeted at the lowest common denominator of the ability of the reviewers.
— Ihe Onwuka (@mazihe) October 21, 2020

Speaker Tips - Bootstrapping Conference Speaking

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Reading Code is a Skill

Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m inspired to write this post because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. Of course a more accurate statement would be “I disagree with some aspects of what someone on the internet said, even though they have an entirely valid point of view”. But that’s less catchy.

I saw a Tweet I violently agreed with, so I retweeted it:

I can't say this enough.

You will read code more than you write code.

Learn to get good at it.

Procrastination

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve had a fantastic week of meeting with colleagues and friends, getting to know some of my organisation, brainstorming ideas for next year, working out how to prioritise and plan, being handed greater responsibility and freedom…

2019

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Right so yes. 2020, hello. One of my 2020 resolutions is to get back to my personal blog. Weekly. Yeah right. Let’s aim for weekly and be happy with monthly.

For my first post let’s do the obligatory look-back-over-last-year. Not because it’s trendy (I’m 41 now, I don’t care about being trendy any more), but because it’s super important for me to understand what I went through and what I achieved last year (every year), otherwise I get caught up in the hamster-wheel of the-next-thing-and-the-next-thing-and-the-next-thing. Progress should be celebrated, not just ignored for the next item on the ever growing, ever pressing TODO list. Also, looking back helps me to plan the next year. Doesn’t have to be super-planned, but setting some goals, objectives, ideas for which direction I’d prefer to go in helps me decide how to prioritise that ever-growing, ever-pressing TODO list.

Me Mum

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t see what an enormous impact Mum made on my life, because she was always there. There’s a quote in the book Good Omens: “It’s for the same reason you can’t see England when you’re in Trafalgar Square” - Mum was a constant, important, dependable presence for my whole life.

I wrote something for Mum while I was on the plane from Spain to spend what was to be our last two weeks together. I’d like to share some of that with you all now.

Ode to a Resting Warrior

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This July my Mum passed away, apparently cancer was the one opponent she couldn’t beat in an argument. Mum had a huge impact on my life, as you might expect, not only personally but professionally too. Maybe I’ll talk about that some more in time. For now, I want to publish the poem my very talented cousin Izzi Giles wrote in tribute.

Code Review Best Practices

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This article was originally a guest post for FogBugz.

As developers, we all know that code reviews are a good thing in theory. They should help us:

Find bugs and security issues early
Improve the readability of our code
Provide a safety net to ensure all tasks are fully completed

The reality is that code reviews can frequently be an uncomfortable experience for everyone involved, leading to reviews that are combative, ineffective, or even worse, simply not happening.

Here is a quick guide to help you to create an effective code review process.

Speaker Tips - Focus on Either Content or Delivery

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When you’re a new speaker, or just starting to consider speaking at conferences or user groups for the first time, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by all the things you worry about when delivering a talk.

Speaker Tips - What to Wear

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

For years I’ve avoided talking about the topic of what to wear when presenting. I didn’t want to cover it because I didn’t want people to think that I only worried about this topic because I was a woman. I also didn’t want other women to inherit any of my neuroses around deciding what to wear. I’m the sort of person who always enjoyed thinking long and hard about what to wear the next day at work, and I know that’s not how everyone works.

Speaker Tips - Wearing a Roaming Mic is More Complicated Than I Realised

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I realise I have a bunch of experience and advice for speakers and potential speakers that I simply haven’t written down or shared. Here’s the first piece on things to consider that you might not have thought about.

Note: as usual, my advice is from the point of view of a woman (me) and is aimed mostly at women, but also as usual it’s probably useful for others to know too.

What Can Conferences Do To Attract More Women Speakers?

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Now I’ve been speaking at (mostly Java) conferences for a while (six years now), I get asked to present at a lot of conferences. Obviously all these conferences are mostly interested in my terribly educational talks, but it’s also because I’m a technical woman and there aren’t very many technical women speaking at conferences.

In my experience, conferences want to do the right thing - they want a diverse line up of speakers, they want to attract diverse attendees. Often this is not as easy as it may seem, and frequently conferences are Twitter-shamed for not having enough women speakers. When it gets to this point (and often before), conferences frequently ask me for advice on speakers they could invite, and how to attract more women.

Being a Developer Advocate at JetBrains

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Mandatory initial exclamation about how little I have blogged here lately. Over a year without updates, oh dear! But a) I have been blogging quite a lot for the IntelliJ IDEA and Upsource blogs, and b) I had another baby, which kept me quite busy.

So on that topic (more or less) I get a lot of questions about my job: what’s involved in the job, what’s it like working for JetBrains, what does a Developer Advocate do, what’s it like working remotely etc etc. Given I also rather generously¹ recently offered to answer people’s questions about my job, I thought the most scalable way was to write-once-read-many, i.e. write it in a single blog post for everyone to read.

What Can Men Do

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

So, I wrote a long email to the London Java Community in answer to an excellent question: “What can men do to support Women in Technology?”.

It’s a bit of a brain dump, by no means comprehensive, and is in answer to a specific question in a specific context, but I’ve been asked to make the information public so it can be useful in a broader context. So here it is.

JavaZone 2016

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote a conference write up. The short version of “why” is because I got a bit bored of doing it. Plus, I found I was attending conferences as a speaker “on the circuit”, and my experience of hanging out, catching up with my friends, chatting to other attendees to see what they’re up to and so forth, didn’t seem as useful to share with people who might want to find out whether a conference is worth attending from a content or atmosphere point of view.

But I feel compelled to blog about JavaZone. I presented there back in 2013, but every year since then haven’t made it for one reason or another (the fact that it’s near my birthday in no way impacts my scheduling…). I made the effort this year, and I’m so pleased. Now I’ve been to many more conferences, of various sizes, various themes, all around the world, and I can definitely state that JavaZone is up there as one of the best conferences around.

Why?

A Year? Really?

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

So I came to the blog to update my upcoming events (at least something stays up to date) only to find it’s been nearly a year since I last blogged! This is terrible!

It’s not that I haven’t written anything in a year, it’s that a lot of my writing energy goes into stuff for the actual day job. Which is good, because that’s pretty much what I wanted from the day job, but the blog makes it look like I don’t write any more.

So I’m going to cheat. Here’s the stuff I’ve written in the last 12 months.

Java 8 MOOC - Session 3 Summary

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was the final get-together to discuss the Java 8 MOOC. Any event hosted in August in a city that is regularly over 40°C is going to face challenges, so it was great that we had attendees from earlier sessions plus new people too.

Java 8 MOOC - Session 2 Summary

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As I mentioned last week, the Sevilla Java User Group is working towards completing the Java 8 MOOC on lambdas and streams. We’re running three sessions to share knowledge between people who are doing the course.

What to look for in a Code Review

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a post for the JetBrains Upsource blog about some of the things you should be looking for when you do code reviews (and some of the things you should not be looking at).

Java 8 MOOC - Session 1 Summary

Tue, 21 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Sevilla Java User Group is working together towards completing the Java 8 MOOC on lambdas and streams. As part of this, we’re running three sessions during the course so we can, as a group, ask questions about the lectures, get help with the homework, and (if we’re feeling very smart!) help people who may be struggling (or might not have watched the videos).

Interview: Trisha Gee on the Java Eco-System

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

While I was at QCon New York (probably my business conference this year!) I was interviewed by Ralph Winzinger for InfoQ. It felt like a short interview at the time, but we covered a lot of ground - Java 8, Java vs other JVM languages, the effectiveness of the JCP, and the future of Java.

Video and the transcript are available on InfoQ.

My Path To Evangelism

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

So, I get asked a lot about how I got into technical advocacy / evangelism¹, so it seems like the most cost-effective way to answer this question is to write a post about it. Warning: it’s a long one!

Java at 20

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I was asked three simple questions about my thoughts on Java turning 20, and ended up writing a guest post for Voxxed. No wonder I can’t seem to find the time to write these days.

Android Xtended

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You may have noticed that the more I go to conferences, the less I write about them. I could claim lack of time, but the fact is that all my write-ups will be something along the lines of “Loved <city>, went to talks that made me think, met interesting people, gave a talk or two that seemed to go well”. Not sure if people get bored of reading that, but I get bored of writing it.

That’s not to say I’m bored of conferences. On the contrary - since I work from home, travelling to new places and meeting Real Human Beings keeps me sane. Plus conferences are fun.

But I went to a conference on Saturday that makes me feel compelled to write something, and not just because it was organised by my two fellow Sevilla JUG organisers. @IsraKaos and @RGDav are both doing more Android day-to-day than server-side Java, so this is an area they’re interested in learning more about. Not content with organising Android events every other month, they decided they had so many interesting speakers they wanted to have speaking here in Sevilla that they wanted to run a whole day, single track conference, on behalf of GDG Sevilla. Android Xtended was born.

Blind CFPs - a Postscript

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Since publishing yesterday’s post, I’ve had a lot of great comments, so I thought I’d write yet another post to answer them.

Are Blind CFPs Really The Answer?

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Off the back of yesterday’s post, I received a number of comments and questions around blind CFPs (Call For Papers - usually to get into a conference you submit to a CFP) for conferences. I often hear it said that a blind CFP will fix, or at least improve, the diversity imbalance at conferences.

I don’t believe this.

I'm so tired of it all

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

We work so hard to promote equality, to fight for the rights of people who are not middle-class white men, and time and again it just feels like we’re not getting anywhere. International Women’s Day highlights the issues that face women all around the world, and make our women-in-tech problem look like a genuine First World Problem, and yet we can’t even get that right.

SVQ JUG: The State of Java

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I think living in a beautiful city in a fantastic climate has its advantages. Not just the obvious ones, but we find people unusually keen to come and visit us on the pretence of presenting at the Sevilla Java User Group (and please, DO come and present at our JUG, we love visitors).

This week we were really lucky, we had Georges Saab and Aurelio Garcia-Ribeyro giving us an update on where Java is now and where it looks like it’s going in the future.

New IntelliJ Tricks I Learnt Part 2

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Apparently, I’m all about Continuous Learning - after I wrote the last post about IntelliJ Tips, I carried on through my trawl of the documentation and, of course, discovered a load more things I didn’t know. And this is all just in the Quick Start section!

So here’s the next batch (although once again I’m not sure how many are only applicable to IntelliJ 14). All shortcuts are for Windows unless otherwise stated, and Mac users should be able to replace the Ctrl key with Cmd in all these cases.

New IntelliJ Tricks I Learnt Today

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Day three of my brand new job - woohoo! One of my first tasks is checking the documentation of IntelliJ, since I’m already a “Power User”, to see if there’s stuff missing that someone like me might want to see. Firstly, a confession - I’m not sure I’ve actually read the IntelliJ documentation before. I mean, really read it. Of course, I’ve dipped into it when I needed to know something, I’ve searched for help with specific items, but like many developers, I tend to use something first rather than read the documentation first.

But I’ll tell you what, today I’ve learnt a whole bunch of useful things IntelliJ can do that I hadn’t previously known, and they’re the sorts of things you would only stumble over if a) you read the docs (pah!) or b) you watched someone else using the tool and saw them doing something you didn’t know was possible.

Developers want to be heard

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a piece for the Java Advent Blog, about how developers aren’t just communing with the computer, they also need to feel listened to by real human beings.

Read it here

New Year, New Adventures

Wed, 10 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Just over two years ago, I embarked upon a journey as a developer / evangelist for a company who was then called 10gen (who got fed up of saying “the MongoDB people”, and transformed into MongoDB Inc). My goals for this role were: to learn what it was like working for a company that produced a technology product; to discover what impact working in an open source fashion has; and to level up my advocacy skills. I have met all these goals, and more - I met some fantastic people; learnt different approaches to software development; discovered my new favourite database for creating applications; moved to Spain; started both a MUG and a JUG; worked to understand the value of community and evangelism, and to help create a strategy for these areas; and my evangelism efforts and open source work earned me the Java Champion title. I’m extremely proud of what I’ve achieved over this period, and very grateful to MongoDB for giving me these opportunities.

Improving Speaker Diversity

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last month at Devoxx I was in a session discussing what we can do to encourage more diversity in our speakers (specifically, although not limited to, increasing the number of women speakers).

I’m going to outline the things I remember being discussed, although as usual we did not find the answer to the problem, only identify some issues and explore some options.

This is a very chaotic blog post, because if I don’t post it now I’ll never post it, and it’s better if my thoughts are scrawled down and posted than if this all goes to die in my drafts folder.

It's not waste, it's learning

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In one my rare weekends at home, I found myself on a pottery course (this is the sort of thing that happens when you’re a “yes” person).

MongoDB London

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR MongoDB London, 6th November, 50% off with discount code 50Trisha.

Using Groovy to import XML into MongoDB

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This year I’ve been demonstrating how easy it is to create modern web apps using AngularJS, Java and MongoDB. I also use Groovy during this demo to do the sorts of things Groovy is really good at - writing descriptive tests, and creating scripts.

Due to the time pressures in the demo, I never really get a chance to go into the details of the script I use, so the aim of this long-overdue blog post is to go over this Groovy script in a bit more detail.

JavaOne 2014, Day One

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I’m at JavaOne again, and after only one day I’ve already learnt stuff. And, of course, had a great time catching up with interesting people. Here’s a summary of the first day.

Getting Started with MongoDB and Java

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve been missing an introduction to using MongoDB from Java for a little while now - there’s plenty of information in the documentation, but we were lacking a step-by-step guide to getting started as a Java developer.

I sought to rectify this with a couple of blog posts for the MongoDB official blog: the first, an introduction to using MongoDB from Java, including a non-comprehensive list of some of the libraries you can use; the second, an introductory guide to simple CRUD operations using the Java driver:

...but most of all, it's fun

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I loved this analogy: Cycling is awfully similar to being a woman. It nicely describes how it feels to be marginalised and not quite “normal”. But there are some things that I’d like to add:

Sevilla Java User Group Java 8 Launch Party

Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last night at the Sevilla JUG we officially celebrated the launch of Java 8 - yay!

Don’t be fooled by the picture, people had more fun than it looks. Honest.

For anyone who missed the session, or who was there and wants access to the materials, here they are:

Readable, Succinct, or Just Plain Short?

Wed, 02 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Which is more readable?

releaseVersion = version.substring(0, version.indexOf('-SNAPSHOT'))

releaseVersion = version[0..-10]

The Handover

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I walked into the kitchen to see how lunch was going and my boyfriend handed me a knife, a part-chopped hard boiled egg and said “finish this, I need to have a shower”. As you do. Apparently there were two things that needed doing - “this” needed finishing, and I needed to keep an eye on the fish.

Fine.

Nighthacking at Sevilla Java User Group

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last Saturday Mr Stephen Chin came to Sevilla on his crazy European tour to show us Lego and Robots. This was our largest turnout yet for a Java User Group event in Sevilla, which surprised me as it was on a weekend, and the weekend before the spectacle that is Semana Santa in Sevilla.

Upcoming Events 2014

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

It’s been a while since I updated you on my travel plans, so now I’ve had some more conferences confirmed, I thought I would pass the information on.

Converting Blogger to Markdown

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using Blogger happily for three years or so, since I migrated the blog from LiveJournal and decided to actually invest some time writing. I’m happy with it because I just type stuff into Blogger and It Just Works. I’m happy because I can use my Google credentials to sign in. I’m happy because now I can pretend my two Google+ accounts exist for a purpose, by getting Blogger to automatically share my content there.

Sevilla MUG March Madness

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last night the Sevilla MUG had our March Madness event. This was our largest event yet, with 36 people signed up. Although the aim of March Madness is to have a MongoDB Engineer at all the user groups this month, that’s not such a big deal for us as I live here, so this was also the first event where I wasn’t the main attraction - [Javier] (https://twitter.com/JvrBaena) gave a really great talk about the lessons learnt at SocialBro after using MongoDB in production for the last couple of years.

QCon London 2014

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. My 4th QCon London. That’s not bad. And every time, it’s a different experience (if you must, see my blogs for 2013, 2012, and even 2007 (part 1 & part 2 - how cute was I? “agile seems like a jolly good idea; automated testing appears to be important”)).

I can’t even tell you what I did on the first day, I was mostly panicking about my presentation - I was inspired after my trip to New York last month to change my talk at the last (responsible?) minute and do a live coding session, something much more technical than my recent talks. I’ll leave the details for a separate blog post though, when the video comes out.

Sparking innovation in an established company

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been running into BSkyB a bunch this week - firstly I was invited to kick off their innovation tech talks series last Monday, then I kept meeting Sky people (that makes it sound like they’re aliens) at QCon.

The Joy of Coding

Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m on a plane (there’s a surprise) on my way back from The Joy of Coding. It’s the title that attracted me to this conference, and it was a great little one day event with awesome people like Dan North, Erik Meijer and Dick Wall presenting. What I liked about the themes is they were broadly technology agnostic, pulling back to a level which made me remember why I’m a developer. It inspired me to do more research and more thinking, and less panicking and trying to write code. That might seem odd, as someone who goes to as many conferences as I do should get loads more research and thinking time than most developers living under the whip, but I seem to spend so much time bouncing from thing to thing I don’t get space to just sit and think, or to read things in any depth.

In my day...

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Web development has changed a lot.

I was aware that there have been many changes in the last few years, and I’ve seen maturity come to web platforms in the form of standardisation and common reusable libraries and frameworks - and I don’t mean reusable in the way we used to “reuse” stuff by nicking it off other people’s websites when we saw something cool.

I used to be a web developer. Sort of. Some times I’ve been on the bleeding edge, and others… I remember using JavaScript to call back-end services with an XML payload before people were using the term AJAX, but I also remember working on an enterprise um… “classic”… JSP application only “recently” - in fact that was probably the last job where I did anything that looked like web development.

Should you notice I'm a woman? Should I care?

Mon, 10 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

So, following on from my observations of being an outsider at FOSDEM because I’m not an open source developer, I do have another story to tell where my female-ness is actually relevant.

Feel like an outsider?

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

So, FOSDEM.

I’ve heard great things about this conference, so I was pretty exited to go

Now I know people talk about impostor syndrome whenever they mention the woeful lack of diversity at tech conferences. Interestingly, I felt like an impostor at FOSDEM - not because I’m a woman (there were quite a few techy women around at FOSDEM, more than I expected) but because I’m not an open source person.

Sevilla MUG, first event

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last night was the inaugural meeting of the Sevilla MongoDN User Group. An event organised with just over 48 hours notice, in a city where I don’t speak the language and where even my best-connected contacts aren’t sure they’re fully plugged in to the tech scene.

Introduction to MongoDB and Big Data

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote an article for the latest edition of Java Magazine which is an introduction to MongoDB for Java developers, and a nod to why it’s good in the “Big Data” space.

	Look inside >

MongoDB and Big Data

Why is it News when a woman becomes CEO?

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m pleased to see that GM has hired the “best person for the job” as their new CEO - that does seem like a good idea. I’m happy her gender did not get in the way. What makes me uncomfortable is the international news coverage of the decision of this large manufacturer to hire a woman as their CEO - if she were a man (and/or black/gay/disabled) would the headline read “The camera loves her. So do employees.”?

Goodbye 2013, you were good to me...

Thu, 02 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Well, if I thought 2012 was the fastest disappearing year on record, that record was smashed into the ground by 2013. What a year! And because I didn’t manage to write this on time to publish elsewhere, I can do a more personal reflection of the year here on my very own blog.

Apparently, reading over last year’s article, I had goals for 2013:

YOW

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

December disappeared in a rush of vacation and a fleeting tour of Australia. It’s hard to believe that it’s the eve of Christmas Eve already, it’s almost impossible to feel Christmassy when you’re getting sunburnt on a boat and seeing people in swim-suits wearing santa hats. A mid-winter festival (complete with trees and fake snow) just feels very odd in summer.

Spock: Data Driven Testing

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the last two articles on Spock I’ve covered mocking and stubbing. And I was pretty sold on Spock just based on that. But for a database driver, there’s a killer feature: Data Driven Testing.

JAX London & MongoDB Tutorial

Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In previous years, JAX London would have been an easy, local conference to go to. This time it took me most of Sunday to get there, and not because of the Super Storm. Still, that gave me the day to finish off the tutorial I was running there on Monday morning. Not that I would be so unprofessional as to leave preparing things until the last minute, oh no….

LinkedIn Etiquette

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For no reason other than LinkedIn communications are starting to irritate me, here’s my personal LinkedIn Etiquette guide. Feel free to disagree with it all.

JavaOne 2013

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So, I thought a few months ago that my blog would become more of a travel blog than a tech blog because of the amount of conferences I was going to. Turned out that I was so busy writing / updating / practicing talks and workshops and, er, travelling, that I never got around to doing retrospectives on the events I’d been to.

Make the Future Java

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I think this is a nice example of how to showcase technology and make it relevant and exciting for people. Something with this approach could do more for increasing the number of people interested in programming as a career than any of the traditional approaches of getting kids and "minorities" interested in IT.

Kids These Days

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a great believer in getting kids to code early - after all, I’m of that generation that was taught

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

at the age of 9. There are quite a few approaches to teaching today’s kids in an engaging way, but I’m a bit wary of the sandbox solutions that teach kids things like how to navigate a virtual thingie around the screen, or lets them create things in a limited virtual world. I don’t think kids will easily make the leap between these sort of games to seeing the full potential of programming - they’re too limited and have no context for the kids. It’s just another game.

Kids need to understand how programming fits into their world, they need to understand the context of coding, if they’re going to fall in love with it.

JavaZone, Oslo

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For the rest of 2013, this blog will mostly be masquerading as a travel blog.

How to get started with the new MongoDB Java Driver

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The second in my short series of blogs about the new Java driver is now available for your perusal. In it, there’s some guidance on how to get started using the new driver, whether you want to use the new (unfinished) API, the existing “classic” API, or a blend of both.

Interviewed by Stephen Chin about JavaOne 2013

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday Stephen Chin, one of Oracle’s Java Evangelists and the JavaOne content chair, interviewed me via a live stream about JavaOne, the new MongoDB Java driver, and my plans to Change The World.

Life on both sides of the interview table

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

InfoQ has posted the video of Dan North and I opining on the subject of hiring. Most of the talk is spent on how to be a good interviewer, and touches on how to market your company to prospective hires. We spend less time on how to do well as an interviewee, but in theory if you know what’s going through the interviewer’s mind, you should be in a much better position to take control of the interview and shine.

Autumn World Tour

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It’s nearly the end of August already (how is summer allowed to go by so fast?) so it’s time to start thinking about the autumn conference scene. It feels like I’m going to be at most of them this year, so hopefully I’ll see you at one of them?

11-12th Sept - JavaZone, Oslo - Design is a Process, not a Document
16-20th Sept - New York - meeting and working with the MongoDB JVM and .NET teams in our shiny new office.

22-26th Sept - JavaOne, San Francisco - Design is a Process, not a Document (I’m in CA 20th - 27th)
30th Sept - 2nd Oct - GOTO Aarhus - Career advice for Programmers; Power Use of Tools.
17-18th Oct - GOTO Berlin - What do you mean, Backwards Compatibility?
28-30th Oct - JAX London - A workshop on the new Java Driver; Design is a Process, not a Document. I should be in London all week.
December - YOW Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney - What do you mean, Backwards Compatibility?

The 3.0 Java Driver - Design Goals

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I feel slightly like a traitor to my own blog, as I’ve written a blog post for Somewhere Else. I’ve written about the design goals for the 3.0 MongoDB Java Driver in the official MongoDB blog (seems sensible, right?). I’m not sure how I feel about cross-posting the entire contents, so I’m just linking you to them instead.

Anyone who’s been to my Backwards Compatibility presentation this year might notice something familiar about the content. The talk covers the design goals of the new driver, and this blog post will let you read them in your own time rather than having me fire them at you at 100mph.

JavaOne Shanghai

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So, I was in China last week. It’s not really what I expected, but then my knowledge of China comes almost entirely from visiting various Chinatowns and watching martial arts movies, so I guess I wasn’t all that well prepared for a modern Asian city like Shanghai.

Can't. Take. Much. More.

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by Your App Makes Me Fat, I was going to write a blog post about decision fatigue. It’s a topic very close to my heart right now as I try to plan for my upcoming speaking engagements, continue working on the new Java driver, try to finish the last couple of blogs on Spock, and last but not least plan for moving home this week.

But since my cognitive resources are at a low point right now, I’ll just leave you with a gif instead:

What programming is like

Spock passes the next test - Painless Stubbing

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the last post I talked about our need for some improved testing tools, our choice of Spock as something to spike, and how mocking looks in Spock.

As that blog got rather long, I saved the next installment for a separate post.

Spock is awesome! Seriously Simplified Mocking

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We’re constantly fighting a battle when developing the new MongoDB Java driver between using tools that will do heavy lifting for us and minimising the dependencies a user has to download in order to use our driver. Ideally, we want the number of dependencies to be zero.

Developers hate support, don't they?

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m at the end of my first official week doing support for 10gen. My major achievements are:

Trisha's World Tour 2013

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Quick update on my scheduled events this year. Please feel free to suggest your MUG or JUG or other tech group as somewhere for me to visit on this Grand World Tour if I’m in your city.

17-21st June - In New York - woohoo! Getting to know Justin Lee, the newest member of the Java team, doing some pair programming (hopefully) and meeting people at the MongoDB Masters’ Summit on Thursday.
24th June - STAC Summit, London - I’m not presenting, but I’ll be there “networking” (a.k.a. drinking)
27th June - Technology Transformation Network, London. Tiny bit concerned about this event now (don’t tell anyone) because I’m hoping to run break out sessions on how to approach design, and I’m not sure I can do this alone….
1-5th July - In Dublin, hoping to talk to a MUG or JUG while I’m there. Invite me!
22-25th July - JavaOne Shanghai (CON1148). I’ve never been east of Europe before, very exciting.
August - Going to be in Seville (Spain), and a weekend in Madrid.
11-12th Sept - JavaZone, Oslo, hopefully.
16-20th Sept - Hopefully working from the Palo Alto office, so if there’re are any events in Silicon Valley or San Francisco that week, I’d love to hear about them.

22-26 Sept - JavaOne, San Francisco.
30th Sept - 2nd Oct - GOTO Aarhus
17-18th Oct - GOTO Berlin.
28-30th Oct - JAX London.
December - YOW Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney - Australia. I’ve never been to Oz, I can’t wait!

And that’s that. The only two other events I’m contemplating this year are Devoxx and the London Java Community Open Conference. I think I’m maxed out.

Calling Dublin Tech User Groups!

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to be in Dublin 1st-5th July. While I’m there, I thought I’d visit appropriate user groups if there are any. I can’t see a JUG registered on the JUG Map, but I was thinking a city like Dublin must have a few tech meetup groups.

Any suggestions? Anyone out there and keen for me to gatecrash their party?

Adjusting to Working Remotely

Fri, 31 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the most obvious differences I faced when I moved from LMAX to 10gen were the working conditions. I don’t mean like being deep underground in some dangerous situation vs being pampered by beautiful slave boys and girls. What I mean is that the working practices at one company necessitated being in the office for core hours, and at the other flexible hours and remote-working are practically mandatory.

Be an Ambassador!

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

You know how I keep banging on about attracting different types of people into programming? You know how we say we need to get them young?

My Summary of GeeCON, Krakow

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I was in Krakow, Poland for GeeCON. Which was excellent! I find it really interesting that conferences all have their own personalities, that they are not all the same.

How are you using MongoDB with Java?

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So, like one of my presentations, I have a question for you. Actually, I have more than one question for you. I’m not going to bother with survey monkey or whatever, I want to share the answers so please, answers in the comments:

Are you using the Java driver for MongoDB in your application?
Are you using the Java driver directly, or are you using a third party library like Morphia, Spring Data, the Scala driver, your own abstraction layer, etc?
If you’re using a third party library, why did you choose that over using the Java driver directly?
If you’re using the Java driver directly, what do you like about it?
If you’re using the Java driver directly, are there any areas that give you pain? Areas for improvement?
Which version of Java are you using?

Feel free to leave additional information if you have it. And this is a public blog, so if you’re really mean I’ll just delete your comment. So there.

Good overview of the NoSQL hype for Real Developers

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Last Tuesday I went to a London Java Community talk which promised to debunk the hype around NoSQL. Whether you’re already bought into a NoSQL technology, or you’re just wondering what all the noise is about, it’s worth an hour out of your day to see Akmal Chaudhri’s comprehensive summary of the technologies out there.

2013 is looking a lot busier than I planned...

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

So, despite promising myself that I would only do one event a month for the rest of this year, looks like I’m going to be a bit busier than that.

How Mechanical Sympathy got me to the airport on time

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Lets talk about mechanical sympathy. Martin Thompson has been making this term very popular in software development, so it’s best to read his description of why he used the term.

Devoxx UK 2013

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Last week was the first Devoxx UK, bringing the brand from Belgium and, more recently, France. And I think it was a HUGE success.

It Depends

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t you hate it when you ask a perfectly good question, and someone comes back with the answer “it depends”?

It’s so frustrating to think that in a world of ones and zeros, people can’t give absolute answers and you can’t rely on “best practice”.

The Coalescing Ring Buffer

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

For anyone who is interested in what LMAX is up to, and is still following my blog, have a look at this post about the latest tool they’ve open sourced: the Coalescing Ring Buffer.

QCon Day One

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I like QCon London, I really do. Not only is it on home turf, but, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t just focus on technology, or a set of technologies.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I had an interesting discussion last night at the LJC developer sessions, and it’s a topic that comes up again and again:

Upcoming Events (and Trisha Freaks Out A Bit)

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My next few talks are where I finally start speaking about MongoDB. After 4 months working for 10gen, I still feel completely under-qualified to speak with any authority on the subject. It’s very different joining a company with an established and growing product, to joining a very young company and being in on the development since practically day one. But I’ve been working on designing the Brand New Java Driver, so that’s what I’m going to talk about.

Wrap up of 2012

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Fortunately for me, the guys at JAXenter chased me for a summary of 2012 and my predictions for 2013 - I say “fortunately” because otherwise I never would have got around to doing it, and that would be another year slipping away silently into the abyss.

Devoxx: The Problem with Women - A Technical Approach

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

As well as talking about, you know, actual work-type-stuff, I was encouraged to give my “Technical Approach to Women” presentation at Devoxx. This went so well at JavaOne that I thought it would be difficult to top. Also, I wasn’t convinced it would work at Devoxx, because the theatres are not well suited to audience participation - the seats are warm and comfy, the room is dark, the speaker is on stage in front of a massive screen….

Agile++: When Agile Goes Well

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If you see anything about LMAX - the Disruptor, Continuous Delivery, or even the selection criteria for hiring developers, you’ll see that LMAX is pretty keen on Agile. However, no-one’s documented the Agile process there, as far as I know. Although I personally had it on my todo list, I never had the motivation, the hook to do it. And I realised eventually that’s because I’m not sure it’s a process that would work very well for another team, in another company, working in another business.

Webinar: Processing High Volume Data Feeds with MongoDB

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of my very first MongoDB webinar, I was… encouraged… to do another. Here at 10gen we’ve been running a series of webinars around using MongoDB in the financial services domain. Yesterday was the last in the series, and was presented in association with C24 - John Davies, their CTO, did most of the talking, and demonstrated their product for automatically turning financial messages from one format into another.

Update 14 Dec 2020: Sadly it looks like the video is no longer available, but the slides are

My First Official MongoDB Appearance

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday I had the ~~nerve-wracking~~ ~~dubious~~ ~~alarming~~ great pleasure of presenting my first official MongoDB-shaped talk. This was in the form of a webinar, which is an interesting and different format.

LJC Open Conference 2012

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday I had the pleasure of being part of the 5th London Java Community Open Conference. This is a great event to end the conference season on - it made me feel good about being part of the LJC, and got me excited about the prospects for 2013.

The fantastic thing about an open conference is that a) you don’t have to prepare like mad for it and b) the short sessions and wide variety of subjects mean that you learn stuff you didn’t expect to.

Summary of Devoxx 2012

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Devoxx 2012 from Roy van Rijn on Vimeo.

Devoxx topped off a crazy two months of conferences. I’ve heard people talk about the conference season in the past, and been slightly (OK, very) jealous of all that jet-setting. I’ll admit, however, to a slight feeling of relief that my focus until Christmas is pretty much going to be coding. I hope.

Brain Overload!

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The moral of today’s story - be careful what you wish for.

Devoxx 2012

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This week I’m at Devoxx for the whole week, and already I’ve achieved two things I didn’t manage last year: I drank Belgian Beer and I’ve spent some time in Antwerp itself.

Java 8 - Introduction to Lambdas Article

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This month’s Java Magazine features an article by me, Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg about the new lambdas coming in Java 8.

The aim of the article is to give an overview to normal, human Java developers, who don’t need to know the theory behind what they are or how they work under the covers, but want to know how to use them when they get the shiny new version of Java next year (or even get ahead of the curve and try them now).

	Look inside >

Exploring Lambda Expressions for the Java Language and the JVM

NightHacking Tour: The LJC

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

On the same day Stephen Chin came to see me at the 10gen offices, we also ran a NightHacking session in the evening with the London Java Community. Not many people turned up (maybe I need to work on my signage to the office?) but it was a great session. In fact, having less people meant we could all be involved.

Interview and Hacking session with Stephen Chin

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

On Monday, Stephen Chin from Oracle visited me at the 10gen offices as part of his NightHacking tour. In the video we talk about my sessions at JavaOne and the Agile presentation I’m giving at Devoxx, and I do some very basic hacking using the MongoDB Java driver, attempting to showcase gradle at the same time. It was a fun experience, even if it’s scary being live-streamed and recorded!

NoSQL is a Stupid Name

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So, I’ve finished my first full week in the new job and I’ve learnt lots of new stuff. Which is great, because that’s usually why you change jobs.

JAX London 2012

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Seemed like a quiet conference this year. Not really sure why, maybe it was the layout of the massive (and extremely dark) main room; maybe it was the awkward L-shape of the communal space; or maybe this year people were more interested in listening to the (really very good) sessions rather than participating or meeting other people. Whatever the reason, it felt quiet and almost low-key.

Performance seemed pretty high on the agenda, as you’d expect from a London conference, with a number of things on offer:

And for my next trick....

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The time has come, and I’m moving on from LMAX. I’ve had an incredible (nearly) four years working for one of the most radical finance firms in the world, during which time I feel I’ve learnt more than the rest of my work experience put together, and had the pleasure to work with some of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever met.

Introduction to the Disruptor Slides

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve produced a very cut down version of the presentation I’ve been giving at a lot of conferences, giving a high level overview to the Disruptor. This serves as a quick intro to the concepts behind it.

JavaOne: The Summary

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So, JavaOne.

Taylor Street Cafe

I’m going to be controversial. I think this was my favourite conference of this year. I know that’s not trendy, and that Oracle-bashing is still a popular pastime. And I know I’ve also made a big deal about how much fun it is to meet people who program in different languages. But there is something very special about being surrounded by thousands of people from all around the world who use the same technology as you, some facing the same problems, some solving very different issues.

JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday dawned, with a sense of foreboding (actually it dawned with me coughing my lungs out, but we’ve heard enough about the sub-optimal state of my respiratory system this week). On this day, I was giving the talk I was dreading when I got asked to do it. It’s the talk I actually put more work into than any of the other sessions I was presenting at this JavaOne. It was the Women In IT talk.

Tips for Presenters

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

…or, tips-for-Trisha-because-she-has-the-memory-of-a-goldfish.

Do not drink too much coffee beforehand.
Do not replace coffee with Diet Coke, it is not better…
Do not drink too much coffee and drink diet coke and forget to eat.
Check skirt length before prancing around on stage.
Check desktop background for public-display-appropriateness.
Close down applications that have popup notifications. Do you really want hundreds of people seeing that tweet…?
Plug in your laptop power. Re-typing your password every time the screen powers down is boring.
Remember your Mac-to-VGA dongle thingie. Bring one even if you don’t use a Mac - there might be a cute/friendly/senior/cool speaker who needs one, and you can help them.
Bring your slides/laptop. Not that important, especially if you’ve put it on dropbox.

JavaOne: User Group Sunday

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Well this is exciting! JavaOne 2011 is the first conference I spoke at, so this the first time I’ve covered the same conference two years running. I think.

It’s very nice to be back at JavaOne. Last year it was my first opportunity to meet so many people - the guys at Oracle who work really hard to make sure Java has its own identity; the JUG Leaders and Duchess folk; the JCP EC committee members; and loads of people who live and work in the area who I wouldn’t normally get a chance to speak to in person.

The Strange Loop

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last week (was it only last week?) I was at Strange Loop, presenting a workshop on the Disruptor.

I didn’t really have any expectations from the conference, I’ve never been before and, if I’m honest, hadn’t heard of it before. So everything was a pleasant surprise.

It’s a very geeky conference. I mean that as a compliment, of course. Lots of very smart people talking about stuff that’s waaaay more advanced than you frequently get in the conferences employers would be happy to pay for. The themes I mostly saw were functional programming and the (insert horribly abused term) Big Data space.

Strangeloop Disruptor Workshop Materials

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

On Sunday I gave my very first workshop on the Disruptor. The aim was to give people some hands-on coding experience using the syntax. Because time was limited (you can’t get people to build an entire application architecture in 2.5 hours) the example is somewhat contrived, and needs a big leap to make it into a proper application context. But the workshop should:

Apologies for the interruption to your service

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Upcoming Events

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So yeah… in keeping with this year’s theme of basically only blogging about the exciting conferences I’ve been to, I’m going to blog about the exciting conferences I am attending in the future. I haven’t been great at doing that, the disconnect between the time I submit a presentation and the actual announcement means that I often forget I haven’t told anyone about what I’m up to.

Firstly, I’m back in the States this month to present my very first workshop - An Introduction to the Disruptor at Strangeloop. I’ve been given a mere 6 months to prepare it (note: sarcasm) and it’s still a work in progress. So, if you’re coming, feel free to suggest things you want to see covered. If you are coming, I’d love to hear from you.

Secondly, I’m back in the States again a minute and a half later for several presentations at JavaOne. I really enjoyed JavaOne last year, it was my first international conference, my first speaking gig, and a great place to meet loads of dead interesting people. This year I’m being greedy and I’m doing more than one talk:

Sun 30th Sept: UGF10467 - Benefits of Open Source
Mon 1st Oct: CON3732 - Concurrent Programming with the Disruptor
Wed 3rd Oct: CON5130 - London Java Community: How to Change the World
Wed 3rd Oct: CON11338 - The Problem with Women: A Technical Approach

I’m afraid the content catalog totally confounds me, so I can’t link to each talk specifically, but you should be able to search on the identifiers.

Then I’m back on home turf, at JAX London, doing the Disruptor talk yet again. I always enjoy JAX, it has a lot of participation from LJC members, it attracts an international set of speakers and it’s right on my doorstep.

Finally, I’d really, really like to go to Devoxx again this year, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. I’ll do everything in my power to be there, but no promises.

Right. I suppose I had better get back to writing this workshop…

Interviewed at GOTO Copenhagen

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was interviewed at GOTO Copenhagen, about Java, the Disruptor, the Graduate Developer Community & London Java Community, and a whole host of other things. So to make up for the lack of blogging this month, here it is:

On The Evil Of Stereotypes

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I attended (one way or another) two events last week that got me thinking

The first was Girl Developers will Save the World - a session that had me a little confused as to whether that referred to me, or actual girls, i.e. those that are not yet legally classed as adults. The second was the Remarkable Women Twitter party the following day.

OSCON Day One

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So, my first day at my very first OSCON. I have to say that when Ben and Martijn told me I had to do OSCON, that it was one of the conferences to go to, I was sceptical - not because I thought it would be rubbish, but because I have enjoyed all the conferences I’ve been to for different reasons.

But I’m really impressed so far.

The subject of women programmers is boring

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been challenged to do a session at a very large conference around women in programming. Which leads to two reactions from me 1) wow, what an honour! and 2) sigh.

Overheard: Development Myths

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Continuing the theme of Things I Have Heard I Don’t Think I Agree With.

To developers technologies are everything

I can’t remember the context of this, but I hear the same sentiment in different guises over and over again. Often from non-techies, but more alarmingly from developers.

Is this true?

It’s true for a certain tribe of techies, sure. And creating and effectively using new technologies is an important part of what drives the current information age forward. But I’d be worried if I thought that 99% of developers were like this.

The birth of a new community

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Topping off my mini-tour at the end of May, I was invited to Rotterdam to present to a brand new community of developers. I was really interested in attending because my experience with user groups is pretty much limited to the London Java Community, and I knew this would be different due to being a) across a wider range of technologies and b) shiny and new.

QCon London: Disruptor presentation video

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The “User’s Guide to the Disruptor” presentation I gave at QCon London is now available on the InfoQ site. This is the same presentation as the one I gave at Skillsmatter in March, but the questions are different. Plus since I’m winging it every time, I probably cover slightly different things or explain some stuff better / worse.

GOTO Amsterdam

Thu, 31 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Three airports and three hotels in a week, and I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Add to that a mere four hours sleep last night, and this might resemble the ramblings of a mad woman (more than usual that is).

GOTO Amsterdam was a different affair to GOTO Copenhagen, which is not necessarily a bad thing - it’s great that the events have their own personalities and aren’t cookie cutter versions of the same thing.

GOTO Copenhagen

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So, before everything gets pushed out of my head, GOTO Copenhagen.

It was my first conference “alone”, in that I didn’t have friends and colleagues from LMAX or the London Java Community there with me. And certainly at the start of the conference, I wasn’t the only one who was standing around, hoping someone would talk to me (in all honesty some of the photos above are a little unfair - the schedule was a very nice, simple phone app so most people spent a lot of time playing with their phones).

What Do You Do and How Did You Get There?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So yet another interview with me is available, but this one is in written form. It’s for the Graduate Developer Community, the aim is to show undergraduates and graduates what real techies jobs are like, and how people doing them they got there.

It’s long, but if you know anyone just starting out their career who wants to get a feel for where they might want to go, please point them at it. The site has a number of interviews with people in different roles so it’s quite a good way to showcase the diversity of what’s available.

(Update: 15 Dec 2020: Original article doesn’t seem to be around any more, so I’ve reproduced the content here)

Why Open Source Your Secrets

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a video of my Open Conference session on the business benefits of open sourcing your software. Given that the conference was at a weekend and had a very intimate feel, I think I was a teeny bit more honest than I usually am. Enjoy.

Update on events

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Just a quick note to say I was interviewed for another podcast (Update 2020: apparently no longer available), again to talk about all-female events. It’s only a short one and there’s probably not much in there that I haven’t said before, either on here or in person.

From the 21st May, I’m at GOTO, both Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I’ll be talking about code & the Disruptor, thank goodness, and will be trying not to rant about the subject of women in technology. If you see me there, come and say hello!

Featured on a BBC Podcast

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s BBC Outriders podcast features yours truly venting about The Subject That Won’t Go Away, Women in Technology. I was interviewed at Sunday’s Girl Geek conference, and got a chance to voice my opinions once again. For those who can’t be bothered to listen, they can probably be summarised as:

There are genuine problems that face people in our industry, let’s talk about those that you have actually faced, not ones that you imagine exist.
In my opinion, now is a great time for women to make a name for themselves - conference organisers are crying out for you to attend and (if you want) speak, and our industry needs talented people of any type and isn’t that fussy about who you are.
Please, please can we start talking about the good stuff that we see as women in IT? We shouldn’t only talk about the issues we face. Yes, we need to highlight problems and address them, but I believe that this message is drowning out all the great things about what we do, and why we love our jobs. We should be encouraging people (not just women) to join us, not putting them off.

In which I defend the Male species at an all Female event

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today I was at the Girl Geek Meetup conference. I didn’t advertise it much because I’ve said in the past I don’t really agree with women-only events, and actually I felt quite uncomfortable telling you guys I was going to be there, knowing the majority of my readers weren’t allowed to attend.

It’s probably worth explaining why I went, so a) I can give you guys and excuse but b) conference organisers can see what people like me are looking for in a conference.

Overheard: Agile truths

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

After attending a number of conferences and events, and performing numerous interviews, I’m starting to hear the same things again and again. Since Dan North challenged all my assumptions at QCon, I’m reluctant to outright ridicule them, but I will put forward my personal opinion.

Note: these are things I have heard from multiple sources, so with any luck I am not breaking the sanctity of the ~~confessional~~ interview.

QCon London 2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’m late with my write-up of QCon, and what’s worse, it will be partial - “sadly” I was in Lanzarote on a training week with the running club from the Thursday (8th) so I missed most of it. A sacrifice I had to make for 7 days in the sunshine…

Java Magazine: Intro to the Disruptor Part One

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This month’s Java Magazine features an article by yours truly, which is yet another intro to the Disruptor. It’s basically a summary of the stuff I’ve written in this blog, updated for version 2.7 - so the names of the classes should be up to date and the responsibilities follow the simplified pattern we use now. If you were looking for an more recent version of my introduction blog posts, this article gives a reasonable overview.

New Disruptor Presentation Unveiled to the LJC!

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I presented my new “User’s Guide to the Disruptor” talk to the London Java Community. Since it was very kindly hosted at Skillsmatter, there is a video of the presentation available, and the slides are below.

Why the customer isn't always right

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I went to get my hair cut (yes, sorry, this is a story about hair). I had thought long and hard about what I wanted. I researched, checked styles online, and bought a magazine so I could show my hairdresser exactly what I was after and there would be no confusion. I was determined I would not be spending that ridiculous amount of money on something I was not going to be happy with. I was even bold enough to ask for some changes to it at the end, which I have never ever had the courage to do before.

Upcoming speaking events

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In theory, I am busy writing material for my upcoming speaking events, rather than writing terribly illuminating posts on my blog (see what I did there?). In actuality I am being lazy and have pretty much taken January off for a recharge.

In the spirit of doing something which ticks both the event-speaking and blogging boxes, this is a quick update on the conferences I’m confirmed for so far. Put the following dates in your diary - these are my first international solo speaking events:

Christmas decorations teach me a lesson about troubleshooting

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

And now, after an absence of several weeks, you get to see how long it takes me to write some of these posts.

I was putting up the Christmas decorations one Saturday when my worst fear was realised¹ - one of my three strings of lights was not working.

The first two went up fine. The third lit up when I plugged it in, and in less than a second went out. Curses. This is not what I wanted, this was supposed to be a short exercise in making my tiny little flat look festive.

So I set about the tedious task of starting from the end closest to the plug and replacing every bulb, one by one, with a spare one to see if it magically lit up again. When it doesn’t, you take the spare back out and replace it with the original bulb. I remember my parents going through this ritual every Christmas, the tediousness of this activity is more memorable than the fleeting joy of shinies.

Video: Why we shouldn't target women

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you have a Parleys subscription, you can watch the whole “Why we shouldn’t target women” panel from Devoxx 2011 a month or so ago. Watch me attempt to monopolise the whole panel as if it was my idea or something…

How to make your CV Not Suck

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When you’re applying for a job at LMAX, your CV (or résumé, for our American readers) usually comes through me and I decide whether to call you for a technical phone screen.

I’m going to let you into a secret.

Interview by the Oracle Technology Network at Devoxx

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Tori Wieldt from the Oracle Technology Network interviewed me at Devoxx. Because I was there to be on the Why We Shouldn’t Target Women panel, the interview is just another platform for me to air my views on this subject again.

Yes, I am actually wearing pink….

London Java Community Open Conference

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Saturday was, hopefully, my last conference of the year. My lucky readers should start to see some posts which are not simply me gushing about another opportunity to hang out with awesome people and learn about interesting “stuff”.

Why We Shouldn't Target Women

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross

I’m back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn’t Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I’m still trying to process it all.

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won’t be invited in future… Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he’s a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women’s issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio’s hair is far too shiny and pretty and he’s funnier than I am, so I’m not standing next to him again.

Devoxx: The story so far

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote

European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages). I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I’m always banging on about diversity, we shouldn’t expect developers to learn in English only.
Really great to meet up with some of the people I met at Java One and am starting to feel more a part of the global community.
Seems to me there are slightly more women here than at the other conferences I’ve been to, and not just because Regina and I pulled together four women for a panel on women technologists. And once again, a lot of guys asking why this is, because they want things to change.
A highlight was seeing my namesake, AutoTrish, up on a cinema-sized screen in front of hundreds of people at Dave Farley’s Continuous Delivery presentation.
Building on from my twitter revelation at JAX London, I’ve found twitter very useful here for messaging people I want to meet up with, but also for chatting to new people and making new friends. It’s not quite as intimate as JAX London though because there are billions more people here, so the chances of actually bumping into the twitter friends is much lower.
Have had lots of interesting conversations with people about the Open JDK, which I guess is the logical extension of the interesting conversations I had about the JCP In San Francisco.
A community event like this is different to an event like Java One, because a single organisation isn’t calling the shots. It’s interesting (and great) that Oracle and Google can both be here talking about the cool stuff they’re up to.

The Diabolical Developer

JAX London - I learn stuff and meet people

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I was at JAX London along with a number of the London Java Community regulars (Martijn/Ben/John/Sandro/Simon/Zoe I’m looking at you….)

My purpose for attending was largely to present the Hardcore Concurrency for Beginners talk that Mike and I debuted at an LJC event a few weeks back. Almost as important was catching up with the aforementioned LJCers and meeting with as many people as would talk to me. After the disappointment of the sessions at Java One, sitting in a room being talked at was quite low down on my list of priorities. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.

A NYSE Product Manager and an LMAX Developer walk into a low latency trading seminar...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“What… exactly… were you guys looking to get out of today’s event? Because…”
“Because we’re girls?”
“Um… yes…”

Kim impetuously opts for The Truth: “We’re here to meet men.”

Our interrogator looks round dubiously.

“No, really, why are you here?”

Phew. My reputation is intact¹

Kim eloquently describes what her situation is as Product Manager and the criteria she’s measuring third party products against. I explain how LMAX aims to be the fastest retail exchange in the world, and therefore low latency is a tiny bit important to us. I talk about how we created The Disruptor on our path to achieve that goal. The guys gathered around us look a little… shell-shocked.

On The Similarities Between Girls And Aliens

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I discovered, through the power of the search words that lead to my blog, that there was an incident at JavaOne that once again opens the can of worms that is Sexism In IT.

This Makes Me Sad. I had a really positive experience at JavaOne. In fact, I would say it was the one conference I’ve been to in the last 12 months where I felt like my gender wasn’t a problem - I even got away with wearing hotpants (tweed is business-casual, right??) without being mistaken for anything other than a developer.

Mike and I debut our new Disruptor presentation

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last Tuesday Mike and I unveiled our brand shiny new presentation: Understanding the Disruptor, a Beginner’s Guide to Hardcore Concurrency. This was a preview of the talk we’ll be doing at JAX London on the 2nd November.

A video of the session is available, as are the slides. I promise not to say “so” anywhere near as many times when I repeat my performance at JAX (is there anything more painful than watching yourself on video?).

JavaOne 2011: Roundup

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Having been back in London for a few days I’ve had some time to digest the madness that was last week.

My lasting impression of JavaOne is almost entirely positive. Granted, it was my first major conference, so maybe I’m just not jaded yet. But let me tell you what I loved about it (yes, I did cover some of these in my last post):

JavaOne: Initial Observations

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a photo of me representing LMAX as I pick up the Duke Award we won for the Disruptor (Thanks to Martijn for taking the photo)

So I’ve been at JavaOne for the better part of three days, it’s time to record some of my observations so far:

JavaOne 2011

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

So, I’m off to JavaOne next week!

This is an unexpected and very pleasant surprise. I’ll be there with Martin (of the Disruptor fame), and Martijn (that’s not going to get confusing at all). Martin will be talking about the Disruptor on Thursday, and Martijn is busy talking about… everything. Most importantly for the LJC he’s representing us in our shiny new JCP Executive Committee role.

I’m really looking forward to meeting pretty much anyone and everyone who’ll talk to me. It’s the first international conference I’ve been to and I’m hoping to meet people I wouldn’t normally get a chance to see in London. It’s also really cool to be able to represent both LMAX and the London Java Community. Hopefully it won’t lead to some sort of split personality syndrome.

First public appearance caught on video

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Remember a while back I talked about my first public appearance?

Well, I chased down the video, because I’m masochistic, and here it is for you all to enjoy. Pleasingly my mannerisms are slightly less of a camp man trapped in a woman’s body, which was my impression the last time I saw myself presenting. It helps that YouTube has made the video so dark you can’t see me.

Slides are available for all to enjoy.

Are you an awesome developer?

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

We are hiring!

If you think we’re doing something interesting, or if you think you can help us do our thing even better, come join us. Your boss will be the dude who wrote Continuous Delivery, you’ll get a chance to experience what Danny calls meta-Agile (or Agile Agile), and you’ll really start to care about Domain-Driven Design.

Ideally we’re after Java people, but at the heart of it we want people who are dead passionate about development.

Apply via the Stack Overflow Careers advert (you get extra brownie points if you mention my blog).

What my hangovers can teach you about Agile

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As a survival trait for living and working in the cites¹ of London, I have a set of rituals to avoid hangovers. If you are not a single person living in a city like London, you might not understand how vital this is. Most networking, particularly in the financial services industry, is done in the presence of alcohol.

So preventing the inevitable hangover is quite important to the other part of the job – the actual working bit. I’ll let you into a secret and tell you my nightly ritual:

Effective Sketches

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On Thursday I was at Simon Brown’s Effective Sketches session at Skillsmatter. Just because my pictures are pretty awesome doesn’t mean there’s no opportunity for continuous learning.

The points Simon made in the session really made sense to me, and I wish I could have had something like that as a primer when they taught us UML at university. Without the context of what the diagrams were supposed to mean, to convey, all the boxes and lines made no sense to me back then. I’m still not a fan of large chunks of UML because I think the convention sometimes gets in the way of real meaning.

My take-away points were:

Disruptor 2.0 - All Change Please

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Martin recently announced version 2.0 of the Disruptor - basically there have been so many changes since we first open-sourced it that it’s time to mark that officially. His post goes over all the changes, the aim of this article is to attempt to translate my previous blog posts into new-world-speak, since it’s going to take a long time to re-write each of them all over again. Now I see the disadvantage of hand-drawing everything.

What I Did On My Holidays

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

And now, a post for my long-neglected, less technical readers.

I took a week off in July to try and avoid that Oh My God I Missed Summer Again feeling. Granted, it’s easy to get that in the UK even if you’re not stuck in an office the entire time.

Really this is just an excuse to post some photos on the blog.

Dissecting the Disruptor: Demystifying Memory Barriers

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My recent slow-down in posting is because I’ve been trying to write a post explaining memory barriers and their applicability in the Disruptor. The problem is, no matter how much I read and no matter how many times I ask the ever-patient Martin and Mike questions trying to clarify some point, I just don’t intuitively grasp the subject. I guess I don’t have the deep background knowledge required to fully understand.

So, rather than make an idiot of myself trying to explain something I don’t really get, I’m going to try and cover, at an abstract / massive-simplification level, what I do understand in the area. Martin has written a post going into memory barriers in some detail, so hopefully I can get away with skimming the subject.

Dissecting the Disruptor: Why it's so fast (part two) - Magic cache line padding

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

We mention the phrase Mechanical Sympathy quite a lot, in fact it’s even Martin’s blog title. It’s about understanding how the underlying hardware operates and programming in a way that works with that, not against it.

We get a number of comments and questions about the mysterious cache line padding in the RingBuffer, and I referred to it in the last post. Since this lends itself to pretty pictures, it’s the next thing I thought I would tackle.

Dissecting the Disruptor: Why it's so fast (part one) - Locks Are Bad

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Martin Fowler has written a really good article describing not only the Disruptor, but also how it fits into the architecture at LMAX. This gives some of the context that has been missing so far, but the most frequently asked question is still “What is the Disruptor?”.

I’m working up to answering that. I’m currently on question number two: “Why is it so fast?”.

In answer to one of the search terms which led to my blog...

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

…“what do female programmers look like”:

Well, sometimes…

If there are any girl programmers out there who are interested in being part of a montage showing who we are, I’d be dead (see what I did there…?) interested in putting us all on one page. And not just because I’m narcissistic. Although that helps.

Dissecting the Disruptor: Wiring up the dependencies

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

So now I’ve covered the ring buffer itself, reading from it and writing to it.

Logically the next thing to do is to wire everything up together.

I talked about multiple producers - they have the producer barrier to keep them in order and under control. I’ve talked about consumers in a simple situation. Multiple consumers can get a little more involved. We’ve done some clever stuff to allow the consumers to be dependent on each other and the ring buffer. Like a lot of applications, we have a pipeline of things that need to happen before we can actually get on with the business logic - for example, we need to make sure the messages have been journalled to disk before we can do anything.

The Disruptor paper and the performance tests cover some basic configurations that you might want. I’m going to go over the most interesting one, mostly because I needed the practice with the graphics tablet.

Dissecting the Disruptor: Writing to the ring buffer

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is the missing piece in the end-to-end view of the Disruptor. Brace yourselves, it’s quite long. But I decided to keep it in a single blog so you could have the context in one place.

The important areas are: not wrapping the ring; informing the consumers; batching for producers; and how multiple producers work.

Dissecting the Disruptor: How do I read from the ring buffer?

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The next in the series of understanding the Disruptor pattern developed at LMAX.

After the last post we all understand ring buffers and how awesome they are. Unfortunately for you, I have not said anything about how to actually populate them or read from them when you’re using the Disruptor.

Dissecting the Disruptor: What's so special about a ring buffer?

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Recently we open sourced the LMAX Disruptor, the key to what makes our exchange so fast. Why did we open source it? Well, we’ve realised that conventional wisdom around high performance programming is… a bit wrong. We’ve come up with a better, faster way to share data between threads, and it would be selfish not to share it with the world. Plus it makes us look dead clever.

On the site you can download a technical article explaining what the Disruptor is and why it’s so clever and fast. I even get a writing credit on it, which is gratifying when all I really did is insert commas and re-phrase sentences I didn’t understand.

However, I find the whole thing a bit much to digest all at once, so I’m going to explain it in smaller pieces, as suits my NADD audience.

First up - the ring buffer. Initially I was under the impression the Disruptor was just the ring buffer. But I’ve come to realise that while this data structure is at the heart of the pattern, the clever bit about the Disruptor is controlling access to it.

A chance to see some of my actual code (even if it is C#)

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Remember I posted about having to write .NET?

Well, the code and the tutorial are available for you, my lucky readers, to ~~rip to pieces~~ view.

I am not the only person responsible for this code though, so be kind.

Vote for the LJC

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I nominated LMAX for a couple of JAX Innovation Awards, but unfortunately we did not get shortlisted :(

However, the London Java Community did! So if you have a second please vote for the LJC for Top Java Ambassador

STAC London Summit

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday I tagged along to the STAC London Summit to provide backup for Mike, who was on the “The Future of Messaging Middleware” panel.

The panel consisted of two messaging providers, one hardware (Solace Systems) and one software (29West/Informatica), and two “users”, Citihub and LMAX. Obviously both providers were arguing that theirs was the best solution. But what I found interesting is that I came away with the impression that everyone was really on the same side - everyone wants to use or to provide the best system, but there are different approaches. Which one you adopt is likely to be influenced by how your team work and the hardware you have (or can obtain).

My first public appearance

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m finally moving up from working behind the scenes to actually doing a (short) presentation for the LJC. I’m going to be giving a lightning talk on Wednesday at the AWS Elastic Beanstalk event, on the JCP - what it is and what our election to the executive committee means. Ben and Martin’s post gives a little more background on the subject.

Another LMAX LJC member Mike will also be giving a lightning talk, on Project Coin.

Getting around a bit

Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m honoured to now be listed on three aggregated blog feeds:

The new and somewhat embryonic blogs.lmax.com.
The London Java Community Aggrity.
ThoughtWorks Alumni, along with a whole host of distinguished names.

The pressure’s on to try and write useful stuff. Oh OK, I’ll settle for “entertaining”.

Why Java developers hate .NET

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I have been struggling with .NET. Actually, I have been fighting pitched battles with it.

All I want to do is take our existing Java client example code and write an equivalent in C#. Easy, right?

Trisha’s Guide to Converting Java to C#

Turns out writing the actual C# is relatively straightforward. Putting to one side the question of writing optimal code (these are very basic samples after all), to get the examples to compile and run was a simple process:

The London Java Community elected to the JCP SE/EE Executive Committee

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As an associate member of the London Java Community (LJC), I’m very pleased with the news that we won an Open seat on the Java SE/EE executive committee. The results show that we got an astonishing 47.5% of the vote - if an MP got voted in with that percentage the newspapers would probably be using the word “landslide”.

It’s quite exciting to be one of the two user groups involved. We hope to balance some of the larger corporate organisations, we’re the voice of real life Java developers who use the language every day, for enterprise development or open source projects.

Cyclist tribes

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Living and working in central London, you quickly learn that the fastest way around town is to cycle.

My extensive research into this activity has shown there are a number of different cycling tribes. Of course, I have split them into the two groups that are most appropriate to me: 1) slower than me and 2) faster than me. You can probably tell what sort of a cyclist I am by my attitude to the two groups.

TradeTech 2011 - Not like a developer conference

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I attended TradeTech last week, an annual event about Equities and Derivatives trading. I assumed from the title that there would be a reasonable focus on technology, but I found it was more “Trade” and less “Tech”.

CSS for Developers: Horizontal and Vertical Centring

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

First, an apology. I will be using the British spelling for “centre”, because, well, I’m British. But it gets really confusing because you have to use the American spelling in the code. And doesn’t “Centring” just look wrong?

How to show your employees how much you hate them

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Due to a combination of my restlessness, my consulting experience, and employers that insist on moving offices frequently, I’ve had the dubious honour of working in a variety of environments.

Today I will teach you, the employer, how to show your staff just how much you hate them.

For those who might want to make the leap from Developer to Architect

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The last two weeks, actual work has conspired to keep me away from the blog. How rude. I miss “the beach” already.

It seems only fair to summarise the lessons I have learnt whilst masquerading as an architect on a short consulting stint with Marc McNeill. Simon Brown at Coding the Architecture is much better at talking about this stuff than I am, but I need to update the blog with something!

CSS for Developers: Cross Browser Table Border Behaviour

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

One of the aims of this series is to highlight some stupid gotchas in support for CSS in the different browsers.

Today’s gotcha is table borders.

Yes, yes, I said don’t use tables. What I means is, don’t use tables for layout. But you can use tables for, you know, tabular data. Like, for examples, lists of instruments and their bid and ask prices.

But you should know that even when you use strict mode, Internet Explorer has slightly… eccentric… rendering behaviour for tables. Actually to be specific, it’s IE7 only.

My Experiences with Android Development

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Because I was missing coding, and because my friend and I had an awesome phone app idea at the weekend, I thought I’d try my hand at developing an Android application this week.

I want to give a quick overview of my preliminary thoughts on getting started on this endeavour.

Background: I’ve got more than 10 years Java experience, but any UI for the applications I’ve worked on was always a web UI. I am completely new to mobile app development.

CSS for Developers: Column Layout Using CSS

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is a continuation of my series of CSS hints / tips / cheats for developers (and other technical-but-not-UI people).

The screenshots are in Chrome on a Mac. The originals were on Firefox on Ubuntu so I can tell you the behaviour is identical.

On Changing The Image Of Programmers

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Gah!! This is exactly what I was talking about - it’s pink, it mentions shoes, and it’s about as patronising as you can get.

Would the chart be different if your possible outcomes were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Linus Torvalds? I bet for a start it wouldn’t mention Jimmy Choos or choice of handbags. And it probably wouldn’t be in baby blue either.

GWT: Why VerticalPanel is Evil

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

At LMAX we adopted Google Web Toolkit pretty early on. One of the motivations for using it was so we only had to worry about recruiting Java guys, and then we could all work on every part of the application including the web UI. Sure, you can learn a bunch of different skills if you want to, but it reduced context-switching and kept the skill set we were hiring for to a nice short list.

On How Not To Target Girl Geeks

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

(First, let me say this post contains opinion, stereotyping and sweeping generalisations. But that’s sort of the point. Also I don’t pretend for one moment to speak for all girl programmers, I can only speak for myself)

When I first started this blog, I wanted to just post “proper” technical information. I wanted to prove that there are girls out there doing “real” programming.

I specifically didn’t want to talk about my gender. I wanted to prove by silence that gender is incidental to what I do.

But, it doesn’t really work that way, does it?

Firstly because one of the first things I get asked by guys when I meet them in this industry is “why aren’t there more girl programmers?” (that’s after they ask “do you work in HR?” followed by “are you a real programmer?” - I’m not joking, this happened this week).

CSS for Developers: The Joy of Floats

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

As promised, the Long Awaited Follow-Up to CSS for Developers Part One! Well, long-awaited if you’re as afflicted with NADD as I am.

Quick recap - the aim of this series is to provide a quick and easy how-to around the magic that is CSS. It’s primarily aimed at developers, although I would hope it’s comprehensible to a range of tech-savvy people.

FogBugs and Kiln World Tour

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to get a place on the FogBugz and Kiln World Tour. I booked it before I moved jobs, and I’ll be honest I had no real interest in the software. I’ve been reading Joel’s books and blogs since my friend Brent bought me Joel on Software and made me read it (he had the foresight to know I’d want to hang on to his copy if he’d lent it to me!). I wanted to see the man in the flesh and hear what he had to say about his software. Because really, do we honestly need yet another bug-tracking / project-management tool?

CSS for Developers: Horizontal Layout Using CSS

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a Java Developer. But I’m also a Web Developer. Web Developers have been so badly maligned over the last decade or so that I always feel wary (and sometimes slightly ashamed) admitting this. There’s some sort of assumption that Web Developers (and Front End Developers) aren’t real programmers. Similarly, “real” developers don’t like to be tainted by coming into contact with that nasty “front end stuff” in case someone mistakes them for a designer.

Trust me, no-one is going to mistake a Java Developer for a designer. For a start, when designers wear geeky glasses it’s ironic. Or chic. Or something.

But developers will be forced to do something around the front end at some point in their lives. Even if it’s because they’re sick of manually kicking off some process and want to give the users a big red button to press instead.

Live at Last

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We went live with ‘real’ customers this week just gone. It’s the culmination of nearly two years work for me personally, and three years for our company.

It’s really nice to be live at last, and to have our name out there. It might (in fact, should) change the focus of our work. Without paying customers it’s much more difficult to prioritise work based on what they might need or want.

Lean Software and Systems Conference 2010 (Bletchley Park)

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a summary of the points I took from the Lean conference at Bletchley. They all need expanding, this is just the stuff that struck me that I want to record.

Comments on representations of our industry

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I have not (yet) seen the presentation this post is referring to. But I think many of the comments Ted makes are very valid, and our industry as a whole should occasionally stop and think. I’ve seen Ted speak at QCon, and I’ve had a lot of time for his comments ever since.

I’m aware that this blog is rapidly filling with comments about gender and perceptions and people-y stuff, when I originally wanted it to be a purely technical blog. But I guess this other stuff interests me more. And there are less people talking about it than there are talking about pure technical solutions to problems.

Why changing jobs frequently is not necessarily a bad thing...

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

…in fact, it’s actually a good thing.

Sexism in IT?

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s celebrate our IT women

“Everyone” knows that there are more men than women in IT. That it’s a “boys” job. Not a lot of people know that the first programmer was a woman. Not a lot of people realise the number of women in IT is DECREASING. And has been since the 80s. In a working world where I honestly believe that in general there are more opportunities for women (OK, inline with the other stuff I’ve been reading I’ll caveat this with white, middle-class women), it seems shocking that such a growth industry as IT is actually losing women, and appears unable to determine why, or stop the flow.

Scrum but...

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Having experienced Flaccid Scrum, I find this article interesting, and agree with most of it.

I’d also like to add though, that if you do the scrum practices (story cards, stand ups, retrospectives, etc) but don’t buy into the fundamental principals, you will not succeed. And that means everyone on the team, not just the people in charge. In particular, if the team is not empowered, is not committing to the estimates and the iteration plan in its heart, and and does not trust, then you are probably better off using traditional processes. Or just as likely to fail whatever process you use.

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Gender Stereotyping

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m very interested in the subject of gender stereotyping, which probably isn’t surprising as I’m a girl in a predominantly male industry. And I like cars, and sports, and get irritated if people assume I’m not “allowed” to be interested in these things.

Far from being discriminated against, however, I find many people ask me why there aren’t more women in the industry and what can be done to encourage girls into IT. If these questions were easy to answer, they wouldn’t have to be asked.

Nine Things Developers Want More Than Money

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Nine Things Developer Want More Than Money

Read if you’re a developer and wondering what’s missing from your job.

Read if you’re a manager and you’re looking to recruit the right types of developers. In particular be honest with yourself over whether your organisation is more aligned to “hygiene” or “motivation”. At least one of the poor job decisions I have made is because the role was mis-sold as one and turned out to be the other.

Working Environment

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

How important to you is your working environment?

Type of desk
What’s on it
Position / type of mouse, keyboard, monitor(s)
Music / background sound (or lack of it)
Open plan vs team room vs cube vs personal office
etc…

These physical items could be extended to include your virtual environment:

Amazing!

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I found my own blog useful. I was configuring Spring validation on my new project, and had to remind myself how to do it. We configured validation on the new project in less than an hour, which beats the two days it took me to work out how to do it the first time.

And I impressed one of my new work collegues. Apparently I am now the Spring Guru. Oooops.

Multiple Environment Configuration in Maven

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I found this blog post very useful.

On the perils of Front End Design

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m reading Joel Spolsky’s User Interface Design for Programmers. A thought that’s struck me is about architecture. It’s easy to get fooled into thinking building software is a bit like being the architect for a building. I’m not even going to go into the differences between engineering practices à la building design and good practice software design. I’m going to start from the easy point, the stuff you can see.

Job Hunting

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve learnt a lot professionally and personally during my time here in New York, but the time has come to go back “home”.

I’ll be relocating to London in September. I guess it won’t hurt to mention on here that I’ll be looking for an exciting new job when I get back there. Check out my LinkedIn profile if you are in the market for a Java tech team lead.

Scrum

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I think the statement that struck me the most when I was on the Certified Scrum Master course was:

The start of the project is when you know the least about what you’re doing

Which of course is absolutely true.

So why do we come up with extensive requirements, detailed design, and fixed plans at this point of time? We haven’t put anything into place yet, we haven’t played with the code, the customer hasn’t seen anything of what we’re promising to deliver.

BSc (Hons) SCJP SCWCD CSM

Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

What are our thoughts on putting all the letters after your name in a CV/resume?

Pretentious? Or the only reasonable time to use all those letters?

Tales from the Other Side: Confessions of an Offshore Resource

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After the acquisition of a company with offices in New York, I pestered my company outrageously until they got fed up and finally relented – they agreed to send me to the US.

To ease the transition, I chose to move onto a project which would allow me to start working in London and continue on the same team after I had moved to New York.

In the extreme over-excitement that followed my relocation, it took me a little while to realise that effectively I was an offshore resource, no different really from any of our Indian test team, and the team needed to manage this appropriately.

I learnt a number of lessons whilst playing this game. Some of these points are also valid for teams with remote resources (e.g. people working from home).

Metrics and Incentives.

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This is a great example of what happens when you try to incentivise intelligent people on very simple metrics.

They cheat.

This was well described in Freakonomics, and something Mr On Software bangs on about regularly. It’s clear that there isn’t really a good answer to the problem - actually that’s not true. The answer to the problem is to have everyone working in a job they are happy in and proud of, one where they are intrinsically motivated, and give them enough information to allow them to make the correct calls when it comes to prioritising work. But I’m guessing that a large portion of the working world does not fall into this category.

Certification

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I know there are arguments against certification, and I definitely think that using certifiction to determine whether to interview or recruit people is downright daft, because frankly learning a bunch of answers isn’t all that difficult. But I personally find that completing a certification really helps to round out my knowledge in an area. I guess my thoughts are that a fairly recent certification combined with the work experience to back it up is something that would make your CV more interesting to recruiters.

AOP Caching

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Today I would like to document my experiences implementing caching with Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) and annotations.

Certified Scrum Master

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hmm. I have been so busy trying to think of “good” things to write here, and not having the time to actually write, that I see it’s been 6 months since the last post.

If anyone is still out there though, I need help. I need a good Certified Scrum Master course in New York or London, preferably in April or May. Any suggestions? The one I wanted to go on was vetoed and now I find it’s not running in NY again until Autumn.

The importance of choosing a good scale for your metrics

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Validation with Spring Modules Validation

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

So if java generics slightly disappointed me lately, what have I found cool?

I’m currently working on a web application using Spring MVC, which probably doesn’t come as a big surprise, it seems to be all the rage these days. Since this is my baby, I got to call the shots as to a lot of the framework choices. When it came to looking at implementing validation, I refused to believe I’d have to go through the primitive process of looking at all the values on the request and deciding if they pass muster, with some huge if statement. Even with Spring’s rather marvelous binding and validation mechanisms to take the worst of the tasks off you, it still looked like it would be a bit of a chore. Given all the cool things you can do with AOP etc I figured someone somewhere must’ve implemented an annotations-based validation plugin for Spring.

Java Specifics

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

When I first started playing with Java 1.5, I thought generics were the best thing since sliced bread. No more untidy casting, lovely type-safe Collections, and when combined with the new for loop, a lot of the tedious tasks associated with Collections became easier and, most importantly, aesthetically pleasing.

Excuses excuses.

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Isn’t a shame that actual day-to-day work always seems to get in the way of progress? How you’re always too busy fire-fighting to actually perform the critical thing that might actually improve affairs.

All this is basically a setup for a roundabout excuse for why this blog has been neglected so shortly after it was begun. I was a bit too busy doing the day job.

Still, people like Joel and Scott manage regular pronouncements and I’m sure they’re much busier than I!

Agile Infection Growing

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This is a bloody good idea. It builds upon my own Virgoen tendancies to write lists and tick things off, but what the list model lacks is the “in progress” state. Plus occasionally my lists get confused. See today’s notebook page:

QCon: Blogger's Summary

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I might be too late in writing my own thoughts on QCon, but a bunch of other people have done a pretty good job.

Certifiction

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

From spellfecker today:

Certifiction (n.) : a professional endorsement which states only that the holder had the money to pay for the exam.

…which reminded me of this debate, particularly the first comment.

Continuing the Agile froth...

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

…there are a number of points in this interview with Paul Oldfield which are interesting to consider when thinking about “doing Agile right”. It seems to be compatible with my “people over process” view - I’m not stating that having good people negates the need for any form of process or discipline, I have seen that this is simply not the case. I do however think that agile techniques in particular rely heavily upon the “right” people / team, for some nebulous definition of “right”.

QCon: TODO list inspired by the conference

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

(Updated 15 Dec 2020 with correct completed status!)

~~Investigate Maven 2 for builds~~
~~Have a glance at TestNG unit testing~~ (completed 2013)
~~Potentially play with JMock for current testing framework~~ (completed ~2009)
~~Play with GWT.~~ (completed 2009-2013)
~~Sign up for Pragmatic Architect event~~
Check out JavaBlackBelt site - what is provided, and what are the feelings of professionals (or, more importantly, recruiters) towards these qualifications?
~~Look into getting Visual Studio .NET again so you can have a go at GUI development in it.~~ (completed 2011)
Go to technorati.
~~Investigate JUnit 4 changes/improvements.~~

(Update: 15 Dec 2020: Huh. I did OK with these over the following decade…)

QCon: Initial thoughts

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Things I took out of QCon:

I want to play with Ajax. Maybe I’ve “grown out” of front end development but that doesn’t prevent it from being (potentially) extremely cool
Selenium looks like a good place to start for automated website testing
It can take up to 7 years to move away from a legacy architecture. Depressing, but at least it shows it can be done and it’s worth the effort
I’m going to become a certified Scrum ~~Master~~ Mistress. I believe Agile in some form or other is the most efficient way to run software development, but there are a LOT of lessons to learn in order to get it right. And number one lesson is you need the right team.

QCon London

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Last week saw the first QCon London conference, an event “designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers”.

The conference consisted of two days of tutorials followed by three days of talks covering technologies, vendor products, and processes. In addition there were numerous “networking” opportunities with plenty of break times to both absorb information and meet other people, plus evening events.