This is a support group for anyone who writes code. From simple scripting to software development, there are a lot of tools, techniques, and strategies that we have in common. Come share your experiences and learn how your colleagues have tackled the same issues that we all face. Java, Python, JavaScript—all are welcome.
Introductions: Who we are, what we do. Discussion: Tell us about your current project. For work or something you do on your own time, we all have something we’re working on. Tell us about something you’ve posted to GitHub and want to advertise, or tell us about an obscure problem that you facing this week. Either way, it is great to get feedback from strangers with a common interest, and it’s fascinating to hear about how other people approach the same issues. Round robin format. Demonstration: Contributing to Open-Source Projects What goes into making a useful contribution? How do you find a good project to make that first step? This presentation will mostly revolve around projects hosted on GitHub, but is language agnostic. The Contributor’s Guide is essential to figuring out how you can help a project, but there are unwritten things going on too—psychology, culture, personalities. Learn how to read through the commit history to learn about a project. Also, how does making a contribution help you? Discussion: Testing How do you balance the need to ‘get stuff done’ in the short-term against the long-term need to keep a project maintainable? How do you find the balance between ‘cowboy’ coding and code-review processes that are so complex that it takes weeks to learn how to submit a pull-request? Is testing just a hassle that gets in the way? Or do you find yourself constantly having to be a unit-testing evangelist? Future planning
