The Care and Feeding of Software

A keynote I gave for Telefonica's Developer Conference "Devcon1"..

The general idea was good software design and concepts.

1. Brendan McAdams 10gen, Inc. brendan@10gen.com @rit The Care & Feeding of Software Wednesday, November 28, 12
2. Open Source Scales 0 25,000 50,000 75,000 100,000 125,000 150,000 May ‘10 Jul ‘10 Sep ‘10 Nov ‘10 Jan ‘11 Mar ‘11 May ‘11 Jul ‘11 Sep ‘11 Nov ‘11 Jan ‘12 Mar ‘12 Wednesday, November 28, 12
3. "In short, software is eating the world." - Marc Andreesen Wall Street Journal, Aug. 2011 http://on.wsj.com/XLwnmo Wednesday, November 28, 12
4. Software is Eating the World • Amazon.com (and .uk, .es, etc) started as a bookstore • Today, they sell just about everything - bicycles, appliances, computers, TVs, etc. • In some cities in America, they even do home grocery delivery • No longer as much of a physical goods company - becoming fixated and surrounded by software • Pioneering the eBook revolution with Kindle • EC2 is running a huge percentage of the public internet Wednesday, November 28, 12
5. Software is Eating the World • Netflix started as a company to deliver DVDs to the home... Wednesday, November 28, 12
6. Software is Eating the World • Netflix started as a company to deliver DVDs to the home... • But as they’ve grown, business has shifted to an online streaming service • They are now rolling out rapidly in many countries including Ireland, the UK, Canada and the Nordics • No need for physical inventory or postal distribution ... just servers and digital copies Wednesday, November 28, 12
7. Disney Found Itself Forced To Transform... From This... Wednesday, November 28, 12
8. Disney Found Itself Forced To Transform... ... To This Wednesday, November 28, 12
9. But What Does All This Software Do? • Software always eats data – be it text files, user form input, emails, etc • All things that eat, must eventually excrete... Wednesday, November 28, 12
10. Ingestion = Excretion + = Yeast Ingests Sugars, and Excretes Ethanol Wednesday, November 28, 12
11. Ingestion = Excretion = Cows, er... well, you get the point. Wednesday, November 28, 12
12. So What Does Software Eat? • Software always eats data – be it text files, user form input, emails, etc • But what does software excrete? • More Data, of course... • This data gets bigger and bigger • The solutions become narrower for storing & processing this data • Data Fertilizes Software, in an endless cycle... Wednesday, November 28, 12
13. Feed & Cultivate Your Software • If we think of Software & Data this way, cultivation, care & feeding become crucial • The way we cultivate good software and data? • Good Practices • Good Skills • Hard Work Wednesday, November 28, 12
14. Don’t Tilt At Windmills... Wednesday, November 28, 12
15. ... Or Shave Too Many Yaks Wednesday, November 28, 12
16. Don’t Tilt At Windmills... • It is easy to get distracted in today’s environment • Keep it simple • Use tools you (and your team) can understand • Use tools and techniques that can scale • Try not to reinvent the wheel Wednesday, November 28, 12
17. ... And Definitely Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew • Break work into smaller pieces • You can’t fit a whole pig into your mouth... • ... slice it into small parts that you can consume. Wednesday, November 28, 12
18. My Beginning... Wednesday, November 28, 12
19. Learn. Constantly. Wednesday, November 28, 12
20. Would You Go To a Doctor Who Doesn’t Learn New Things? Wednesday, November 28, 12
21. And Don’t Forget History... Wednesday, November 28, 12
22. Lack of Planning != Agile Wednesday, November 28, 12
23. Let’s Remember The Rules Wednesday, November 28, 12
24. This Includes Default Settings Wednesday, November 28, 12
25. https://jeffpeachey.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/measure-twice-cut-once/ The Rule is “Measure Twice, Cut Once” Wednesday, November 28, 12
26. Lead From The Front Wednesday, November 28, 12
27. Community Matters Wednesday, November 28, 12
28. Eat Your Own Dog Food Wednesday, November 28, 12
29. • 15 years as a developer taught me this: “Tests seem like a really good idea... I’m tired of fixing my broken crap in production” for (i <- 1 to ∞) println(“Tests. Matter.”) Eating Your Own Dog Food Wednesday, November 28, 12
30. Bugs... and how to avoid them. Wednesday, November 28, 12
31. Continuous Integration Testing Wednesday, November 28, 12
32. Learn To Relax Wednesday, November 28, 12
33. ¿QUESTIONS? Wednesday, November 28, 12