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A software conference that advocates for quality
- imwally 1y agoYou would think a conference that advocates for quality software would have a better website.
- mrbluecoat 1y agoI hesitated mentioning it, thinking perhaps I was the only one who thought so. The twitch video failing to load, the static text on blurred background text video, the horizontal text scrolling on mobile, ...
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoText in video always sucks, but that's just how twitch coding sessions work.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoI'm disillusioned because it never happens, but purveyors of conferences and books are happy to sell the promised land™ of how "it's really going to be different this time." Processes, tools, and diligence vigilantly seem the most apparent path. Perhaps rehash the 50 year old debate of professionalization while AI vibes coding is barking at the door, because what could possibly go wrong with even less experience doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
- intelVISA 1y agoAye, it never happens but it does sell a lot of books ;) I don't think we'll reach this promised land™ until incentives re-align. Treating software as an assembly line was obviously The Wrong Thing judging by the results - problem is how can we ever move to a model that rewards quality perhaps similar to (book) authors and royalties? Owner-operator SaaS is about as close as you can get but limits you to web and web-adjacent.
- ozim 1y agoJust like all the fitness content. Get couple shredded guys and gals to show off how fit they are so everyone feels guilty they are snacking past 8PM. Sell another batch of “how to do pushups” followed by “how to do pushups vol.2” with “pushup pro this time even better”. Where in the end normal people are not getting paid for getting shredded, they get paid for doing their stuff. I just constantly feel like I am not a proper dev because I mostly skip unit tests - but on the other hand I built last 15 years couple of systems that worked and were bringing in value.
- zoover2020 1y agoWhy would you skip unit tests? Especially in the AI age. You can quickly verify your behavior. Also, by not writing them you're also missing out on opportunities to modularize your code. Obviously, this assumes you write enterprise grade code. YMMV
- ozim 1y agoYou can write modular code without writing tests - I write testable code - I don't write tests. When I need I can always add them back, but I tend to skip it as mostly it doesn't make sense. But still cottage industry of "clean code" is pushing me into self doubts and shame.
- esafak 1y agoIf it's testable it's trivial to write tests for! You don't want the next person to introduce a bug, do you?
- ozim 1y agoRead my original post again. We don’t have bugs that all those “do it right way” people claim doing it for 15 years with good track record. You just contribute to BS scare tactics of people selling “clean code”.
- jackblemming 1y agoIt happens when an ex-engineer is in a leadership position. The results are good, but it’s typically a small part of having a successful company. However, you should want to build quality software because building quality things is fulfilling. Unfortunately certain systems have made the worship of money the end all be all of human experience.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThe cult of morbid wealth slithered into the minds of people who have little or no money yet see themselves as temporarily-embarrassed, future billionaires because they work at one of the corporations as a peon or see billionaires on TV.
- rachofsunshine 1y agoIt doesn't happen because building the best software is not the goal of a software engineering job. If you want to do that on your own time, that's fine - but the purpose of a job is economic. Of course you should write software of some reasonable quality, but optimizations have diminishing economic returns. Eventually, the returns are lower than the cost (in time, money, etc) of further optimizing, and this break-even point is usually at a lower level of quality than engineers would like it to be. Leadership and engineering managers know this and behave accordingly.
- jcgrillo 1y agoWhile I agree with everything you've said, I think you might be making an assumption that quality costs time. In my experience this isn't the case, unless you're starting from a low quality codebase or working with low quality people. A high quality team can produce high quality software in less time than it takes a low quality team to produce low quality software meeting the same functional requirements. The whole ballgame is making sure you have no low quality people on your team.
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- wiseowise 1y ago> A high quality team can produce high quality software in less time than it takes a low quality team to produce low quality software meeting the same functional requirements. Key word is ‘can’. And it takes far more time and money to assemble “quality” team.
- rachofsunshine 1y agoThis isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. The quality of your team is more-or-less a pre-existing background variable. The question is whether a team of comparable quality takes longer to produce quality software than hacked-together software, and the answer appears to be "yes". The only way out of this is if optimizing more for code quality *actually helps you recruit better engineers*. I can put a little data to that question, at least. I run a recruiting company that does interviews, so we have data both on preferences and on apparent skill level. I went and split our data set by whether an engineer indicated that emphasis on code quality was important to them. Our data suggests that you can probably make slightly better hires (in a raw technical-ability sense) by appealing to that candidate pool: - Candidates who emphasized quality were slightly (non-significantly) more likely to pass our interview and, - Candidates who emphasized quality were slightly (non-significantly) less likely to have gotten a job already The effect is pretty small, though, and I doubt it outweighs the additional cost.
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- jofzar 1y ago> A software conference that advocates for quality I am going to keep saying this, if your main tagline/ethos is broken by your website you have failed. * On mobile the topics are hidden without scroll over. You also can't read multiple of the topics without scrolling right as you read. * The background is very distracting and disrupts readability. * None of your speakers have links to their socials/what they are known for. * > Who are the organizers? Sam, Sander and Charlie. * * Ah yes, my favourite people.... At least hyperlink their socials.
- brabel 1y agoIt bothers me that this is from Sweden, a most inclusive country, while being pretentiously exclusive. I live in Sweden and wouldn’t mind going to a small conference on my holidays, but unfortunately I can’t find the “charming town” where this is supposedly taking place nor know how to find Sam, Sander and Charlie.
- gjadi 1y ago> Physical attendance will be invite-only. Tickets will not be publicly available. Invitees will receive an attendee guide with further information.
- supportengineer 1y agoI’ve seen one company in my 30 year career with effective quality control. The QE engineers and the development engineers were in entirely separate branches of the org chart. They had different incentive structures. The interface documentation was the source of truth. The release cadence was slow. QE had absolute authority to stop a release. QE wrote more code than development engineers did with their tests and test automation.
- djaychela 1y agoWas the end result better or worse for this? I'm not being facetious, I just can't get if you think it was a good idea!
- supportengineer 1y agoThe software was rock solid. There were very few surprises once deployed.
- tsimionescu 1y agoThe company I work for used to be organized like this a decade or so ago, and people who were around back then still tell horror stories that we all laugh about. Things like bug targets not being met leading to extreme bug ping-pong ("you didn't specify the phase of the moon when this crash on clicking Run reproduced, Needs Information", "this GUI control is misaligned, here are 5 bugs, one for each button that is not where it should be", endless hostile discussions on the severity of bugs and so on). Sofwtare development and quality assurance should be tightly integrated and should work together on ensuring a good product. Passing builds over a wall of documentation is a recipe for disasters, not good quality software.
- supportengineer 1y agoEveryone was in the same Bay Area office building and both teams talked to each other and ate lunch together and sat together
- thecupisblue 1y ago
- bravesoul2 1y ago> Where in Sweden is it happening? > In a charming small town
- kilpikaarna 1y agoThis thing feels pretty weird to me. I'm guessing it's an attempt at organizing some sort of european Handmade event, and trying to keep it small. But between the sparse website, invite-only and anonymous organizers, it just feels like it's emphasizing the reactionary vibes around the Handmade/casey/jblow sphere. Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything. Glad to see they got Sweden's own Eskil Steenberg though. Tuning in for that at least.
- kristoff_it 1y agoThat's pretty much what it is, it's a reaction to an implosion that happened last year in the Handmade Network related to the Handmade Seattle conference which caused the conference organizer and the community leads to go separate ways. https://handmade.network/blog/p/8989-separating_from_handmade_cities https://handmade.network/blog/p/8989-separating_from_handmad... https://handmadecities.com/news/splitting-from-handmade-network/ https://handmadecities.com/news/splitting-from-handmade-netw...
- userbinator 1y agoLike they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything. There's a reason web developers, and the ecosystem/community around them, are the butt of many jokes. I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
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- loktarogar 1y ago> I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality. That's a pretty broad claim. This conference could be in response to a perceived negative effect on quality, but claiming that as a fact seems hard to back up to me
- fzeindl 1y agoWhat is needed is more evidence based software engineering. Statistical methods applied to datasets correlating issue trackers with code ASTs to show us exactly which ways of coding are correlated with longer issue times, frequent bugs etc. I sometimes wonder if there could be an optimal number of microservices. As far as I know no one has connected issue data to the number of microservices before. Maybe there‘s an optimal number like „8“ which leads to lower number of bugs and faster resolution times.
- NohatCoder 1y agoDepending on who you ask the answer is either "It depends completely on the task, and it is in any case much more important that you divide your application in the right places than exactly how many bits you end up with", or "1". If you ask Amazon then the more the merrier, because the number of microservices is effectively a multiplier on the bill.
- cushychicken 1y agoI think I’ve finally figured out just what is that annoys me about the “software quality” crowd. Quality is a measurement. That’s how it works in hardware land, anyway. Product defects - and, crucially, their associated cost to the company - are quantified Quality is not some abstract, feel good concept like “developer experience”. It’s a real, hard number of how much money the company loses to product defects. Almost every professional software developer I’ve ever met is completely and vehemently opposed to any part of their workflow being quantified. It’s dismissed as “micromanagement” and “bean counting”. Bruh. You can’t talk about quality with any seriousness while simultaneously refusing metrics. Those two points are antithetical to one another.
- vodou 1y agoSome thoughts regarding this: 1. It is partly because the typical metrics used for software development in big corporations (e.g., test coverage, cyclomatic complexity, etc) are such a snake oil. They are constantly misused and/or misinterpreted by management and because of that cause developers a lot of frustration. 2. Some developers see their craft as a form of art, or at least an activity for "expressing themselves" in an almost literary way. You can laugh at this, but I think it is a very humane way of thinking. We want to feel a deeper meaning and purpose in what we do. Antirez of redis fame have expressed something like this. [0] 3. Many of these programmers are working with games and graphics and they have a very distinct metric: FPS. [0] https://blog.brachiosoft.com/en/posts/redis/ https://blog.brachiosoft.com/en/posts/redis/
- cushychicken 1y ago1. Totally agree that the field of software metrics is dominated by clueless or outright bad actors. I can say with complete certainty that I do not know the right way to measure software quality. All I know is that quality is handled as a metric in most hardware companies, not an abstract concept. When it’s talked about as such an ephemeral thing by software people, it strikes me as a bit disconnected to reality. (If I was going to try, I’d probably shoot for bugs per release version, or time from first spec to feature release.) 2. With respect: that’s a bit of an exceptionalist mindset. There’s nothing precious about software’s value to a business. It’s a vehicle to make money. That’s not to say craft isn’t important - it is, and it has tangible impacts to work. The point I’m making is that: my boss would laugh me out of the room if I told him “You can’t measure the quality of my electronics designs or my delivery process; it’s art.” 3. I’ve never heard of FPS but I’m very interested in learning more. Thanks for sharing the link. Edit: oh ok duh yeah of course you could measure the frame rate of your graphics stack and get a metric for code quality. D’oh. Whoops. XD
- __grob 1y agoI know Berkeley Mono when I see it! My go-to terminal font for coming up on three years. Automatically gets me pumped about this conference.
- satisfice 1y agoThere is no indication I see from the website that anything about this conference relates to quality, specifically. I don't see how anyone can be "for" quality and not talk about how quality can be assessed. Where are the talks about that?
- aaronbasssett 1y agoThey don't advocate for diversity that's for sure
- tsss 1y agoGood for them.
- alabhyajindal 1y agoI hate talk titles of this form: "Most of your projects are stupid. Please make some actual games.". So annoying. I know it's not personal but I'm sure a better title exists for all talks that choose this form. Why do you have to insult the audience?
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoFor an actual game you need a great story or a great concept, and for that you need to be an artist, it's not just a problem of formalized business logic and correctness. How do I draw sprites? I can draw geometric sprites, but I can't draw artistic sprites. I can make maps, but what should be on those maps? How do I even music?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoSounds good, but unless it advocates for HR practices that retain talent, and corporate practices that incentivize Quality, it probably won't result in any changes. Personal Quality Coding practices have been around for as long as software has been a thing. Way back when, Watts Humphrey, Steve McConnell, and Steve Maguire wrote books on how to maximize personal Quality. Many of their techniques still hold true, today. But as long as there are bad people managers and short-sighted execs, you'll have shit quality; regardless of who does the work.
- nyarlathotep_ 1y ago> Sounds good, but unless it advocates for HR practices that retain talent, and corporate practices that incentivize Quality, it probably won't result in any changes. Overwhelming majority of companies have no interest in even approaching the idea of what that would mean. "we need 7 years experience with Mulesoft and Kubernetes." sure, yeah, whatever.
- elcapitan 1y agoSo far this has been great, Casey Muratori's talk about the history of OOP aspects of programming has been quite insightful. Will need to revisit when it's on YT.
- jiehong 1y agoI wish they had a better website, that's for sure. Not even a section of where and when to find the talks offline.
- mediumsmart 1y agoWe should have a framework for dysfunctional code so we can build those projects faster and ship before the competition.
- WeirderScience 1y agoLooking forward to Casey Muratori's talk!
- emseetech 1y agoWhen I saw the title of the conference I immediately thought of him so I'm not surprised he's headlining!
- reactordev 1y agoCurious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
- lotyrin 1y agoThey probably just manage to realize that being seen to be "moving fast with AI" simply isn't a goal unto itself, that it has to deliver something of value beyond itself.
- Terr_ 1y agoOr at least "value" beyond that reaped by current investors unloading their shares onto "Greater Fool" buyers at high prices.
- emseetech 1y agoWe could be in a tortoise vs. hare situation... Unless we find ourselves back in the conditions of the 2010's again, thoughtfully building software to be high quality and high performance may win out in the long run over "move fast and break things."
- lotyrin 1y agoAlways have been. It’s why the vast majority of disposable corporate garbageware, products chasing a buck, consumer shovelware, etc is built on the shoulders of thoughtfully designed, high quality, mature software that stands the test of time. No popular production software runs on an OS kernel someone vibe coded yesterday. Durable utility is where quality lies, as the cost of quality is able to amortize. Chasing trends is, by definition, costly.
- ktallett 1y agoThere are plenty of alternative software needs that do not need to be AI based nor do they need to change tactics due to the current obsession with AI.
- wavemode 1y agoThe programming language in the background of this website appears to be Odin.
- jeberle 1y agoBill Hall "Ginger Bill", the creator Odin, is a speaker on day 1.
- rkagerer 1y agoWhere can you actually learn the substance of what this conference is about? All I found is a Twitch tagline that reads "Software is getting worse. We're here to make it better."
- Suppafly 1y agoThe have a list of the presentations in the original link. That should at least give you some idea what they're going to talk about.
- ravenstine 1y agoIf only they could get Jonathan Blow to be a speaker.
- throwawaymaths 1y agothe logo is an unsettling convolution of the back orifice logo
- ravenstine 1y agoNow that you mention it, I'll never see the symbol of the Galactic Empire the same way again.
- xyst 1y agoSeems like a waste of time to me, especially in this age of AI slop somehow passing as quality. Just another excuse to drink/network/party on company’s dime. However, I would be interested in establishing a union for technologists across the nation. Drive quality from the bottom up, form local chapters, collectively bargain.
- zx8080 1y agoFor a non-engineer (business) person the case "engineering quality vs move fast break things" sounds more like "slow & expensive VS fast". The choice is obvious.
- no_wizard 1y agoIt’s not that at all though, the adage “slow down to speed up” applies, because high quality engineering will inevitably increase throughput in the long run. Really that’s the core of it
- hackable_sand 1y agoIt's more like "slow and expensive vs. fast and more expensive"
- bGl2YW5j 1y agoYou should challenge this idea in your internal monologue. Learn a bit more about technology and how it's made. "Fast" in most cases most definitely does not equal cheap, especially over the long term.
- userbinator 1y ago"How can you not have enough time to do it right, but enough time to do it twice?"
- kragen 1y agoI may be the only one who thought this, but this doesn't seem to be related to the fondly remembered Better Software Magazine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Software_Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Software_Magazine It seems to be socially associated with the Handmade Hero and Jon Blow Jai crowd, which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame. They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.
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- swesour 1y ago> which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame This is not at _all_ my interpretation of Casey and JBlow's views. How did you arrive at this conclusion? > They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness. They're definitely very concerned about efficiency, but user experience? Are you referring to DevX? They definitely don't prize any kind of UX above correctness.
- kragen 1y agoBy reading their blog posts and watching their videos.
- mustache_kimono 1y ago> This is not at _all_ my interpretation of Casey and JBlow's views. IMHO this group's canonical lament was expressed by Mike Acton in his "Data-Oriented Design and C++" talk, where he asks: "...Then why does it take Word 2 seconds to start up?!"[0]. See also Muratori's bug reports which seem similar[1]. I think it is important to note, as the parent comment alludes, that these performance problems are real problems, but they are usually not correctness problems (for the counterpoint, see certain real time systems). To listen to Blow, who is actually developing a new programming language, it seems his issue with C++ is mostly about how it slows down his development speed, that is -- C++ compilers aren't fast enough, not the "correctness" of his software [2]. Blow has framed these same performance problems as problems in software "quality", but this term seems share the same misunderstanding as "correctness". And therefore seems to me like another equivocation. Software quality, to me, is dependent on the domain. Blow, et. al, never discuss this fact. Their argument is more like -- what if all programmers were like John Carmack and Michael Abrash? Instead of recognizing software is an economic activity and certain marginal performance gains are often left on the table, because most programmers can't be John Carmack and Michael Abrash all the time. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkdpLSXUXHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkdpLSXUXHY
- kazinator 1y agoA few people shooting the shit in some Swedish town will not amount to anything. It's a sneeze in a hurricane.