Speakers
- Brad Abrams
- Tom Ball
- David Boloker
- Ryan Breen
- Bob Byron
- Max Carlson
- Ludovic Champenois
- Patrick Chanezon
- Scott Davis
- Scott Dietzen
- Keith Donald
- Nicholas Eddy
- Cal Evans
- Jon Ferraiolo
- Neal Ford
- Thomas Fuchs
- Jesse James Garrett
- Nate Grover
- Aaron Gustafson
- Kevin Hakman
- Clint Hall
- Stuart Halloway
- Josh Holmes
- Molly Holzschlag
- Kevin Hoyt
- Bob Ippolito
- Bruce Johnson
- Sean Kane
- Nik Krimm
- Howard Lewis Ship
- Kevin Lynch
- Dustin Machi
- Matthew McCullough
- Steffen Meschkat
- Eric Miller
- Eric Miraglia
- William Morris
- Aaron Newton
- Vic Patterson
- Nandini Ramani
- Aza Raskin
- Torrey Rice
- Tom Robinson
- Rick Ross
- Alex Russell
- Christian Schalk
- Dylan Schiemann
- Matt Schmidt
- Nathaniel Schutta
- Bill Scott
- Scott Shattuck
- Deryk Sinotte
- Ken Sipe
- Brian Sletten
- Steve Souders
- Etienne Studer
- Venkat Subramaniam
- Tenni Theurer
- David Verba
- Rich Waters
- Dustin Whittle
- Mike Wilcox
- Greg Wilkins
- James Williams
- Chris Wilson
- Richard Worth
- Nicholas C. Zakas
- Kris Zyp
Neal Ford
Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.
Blog
Empowering Sinookas using Social Networks to Maintain a Durass
Posted Tuesday, December 22, 2009
One of the recommendations I frequently give at conferences when asked about "What books are you reading" is to get out of the purely technical realm often so that you can communicate more effectively with the other huma more »Productivity Pron
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2009
One of my former coworkers & I used to spend hours talking about how to set up the best individualized personal information manager. We used to call those conversations productivity porn, not realizing that someone wo more »Twitter Matters: The Meme Abiogenesis of the Internet
Posted Wednesday, October 7, 2009
This is part three in an exploration of why Twitter makes sense, highlighting its use as a legitimate tool for connections and idea generation. The first article is under Twitter Matters: Keeping Up with Weak Social Links more »Presentations
Testing with Selenium
Selenium is the premiere open source user acceptance testing tool for web applications. This session covers all the basics you need to become proficient using Selenium, including setup, actions, assertions, and customization. I cover the basics of both Te more »Advanced Selenium
This session discusses advanced Selenium techniques for testing web applications. It discusses techniques for both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, including data driven tests, creating branch points, testing Ajax applications, creating flexible te more »Web Punchlist
When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? more »Testing with Selenium
By Neal Ford
Selenium is the premiere open source user acceptance testing tool for web applications. This session covers all the basics you need to become proficient using Selenium, including setup, actions, assertions, and customization. I cover the basics of both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, discussing where each is important. I also show automation tools like the SeleniumIDE for recording tests.
This talk provides a firm foundation for starting, maintaining, and leveraging Selenium testing for your web applications.
Advanced Selenium
By Neal Ford
This session discusses advanced Selenium techniques for testing web applications. It discusses techniques for both TestRunner and Remote Control Selenium, including data driven tests, creating branch points, testing Ajax applications, creating flexible tests, integration with continuous integration, and tons more. This session takes Selenium to the next level, showing how to handle complex, real world scenarios in Selenium.
Mostly, though, this session delves into specific techniques for testing real world kinds of behaviors in web applications. I discuss data driven tests, generated tests, decision points in tests, interactive Remote Control, integration with continuous integration, testing Ajax applications, and future directions. This session will turn up the volume on your testing to "11".
Web Punchlist
By Neal Ford
When you buy a new house, you tour the new property with the builder with a punchlist, finding all the fit and finish things that aren't quite right yet. You've built your web site, and it all seems to be working. Where's the punchlist for your web site? This session gives you just that: a checklist you can use to verify that your web application is ready for occupation.
I cover things like where import your JavaScript and CSS, how to handle images so that they are aggressively cached, how much you should care about XHTML, and lots more. This talk will give you a fit and finish check list you can apply to your shiny new web application to see if it's up to spec.
Books
by Neal Ford
Price: $26.39
You Save: $13.60 (34%)
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Anyone who develops software for a living needs a proven way to produce it better, faster, and cheaper. The Productive Programmer offers critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use. Master developer Neal Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity--how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer, and avoid repetition--he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code, and become more valuable to your team. You'll learn to:
- Write the test before you write the code
- Manage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiously
- Build only what you need now, not what you might need later
- Apply ancient philosophies to software development
- Question authority, rather than blindly adhere to standards
- Make hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programming
- Be sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstraction
- Pick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job
This isn't theory, but the fruits of Ford's real-world experience as an Application Architect at the global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks. Whether you're a beginner or a pro with years of experience, you'll improve your work and your career with the simple and straightforward principles in The Productive Programmer.
- Write the test before you write the code
by ThoughtWorks Inc.
Price: $29.60
You Save: $9.35 (24%)
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ThoughtWorks is a well-known global consulting firm; ThoughtWorkers are leaders in areas of design, architecture, SOA, testing, and agile methodologies. This collection of essays brings together contributions from well-known ThoughtWorkers such as Martin Fowler, along with other authors you may not know yet. While ThoughtWorks is perhaps best known for their work in the Agile community, this anthology confronts issues throughout the software development life cycle. From technology issues that transcend methodology, to issues of realizing business value from applications, you'll find it here.
by
Price: $22.76
You Save: $7.19 (24%)
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Twenty-seven weekends a year, the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference rolls into another town, featuring the world's best technical speakers and writers. Up until now, you had to go to one of the shows to soak up their collective wisdom. Now, you can hold it in the palm of your hand. The No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology represents topics presented on the tour, written by the speakers who created it. This book allows the authors the chance to go more in depth on the subjects for which they are passionate. It is guaranteed to surprise, enlighten, and broaden your understanding of the technical world in which you live.
The No Fluff, Just Stuff Symposium Series is a traveling conference series for software developers visiting 27 cities a year. No Fluff has put on over 75 symposia throughout the U.S. and Canada, with more than 12,000 attendees so far. Its success has been a result of focusing on high quality technical presentations, great speakers, and no marketing hype. Now this world-class material is available to you in print for the first time.
by Neal Ford
Price: $34.16
You Save: $10.79 (24%)
- A guide to the topics required for state of the art Web development, this book covers wide-ranging topics, including a variety of web development frameworks and best practices. Beginning with coverage of the history of the architecture of Web applications, highlighting the uses of the standard web API to create applications with increasingly sophisticated architectures, developers are led through a discussion on the development of industry accepted best practices for architecture. Described is the history and evolution towards this architecture and the reasons that it is superior to previous efforts. Also provided is an overview of the most popular Web application frameworks, covering their architecture and use. Numerous frameworks exist, but trying to evaluate them is difficult because their documentation stresses their advantages but hides their deficiencies. Here, the same application is built in six different frameworks, providing a way to perform an informed comparison. Also provided is an evaluation of the pros and cons of each framework to assist in making a decision or evaluating a framework on your own. Finally, best practices are covered, including sophisticated user interface techniques, intelligent caching and resource management, performance tuning, debugging, testing, and Web services.