Mike Sperber
Sessions
A major part of software development is maintenance, i.e. tinkering with software that should already be completed but still somehow does not work as it should. Software developed by tinkering is the antithesis to resilient technology, and a growing threat to our profession and our lives. Working on this kind of software crushes the soul. Yet this is exactly how most IoT devices (and computers in general) are programmed these days. We need to replace the dead technology-oriented objects of the past with supple models enriching our domains and our souls. This talk shows how it is done.
Teaching beginners how to program is often hard. We love building programs, and seeing our loved ones struggle with this is painful. Showing them how to copy-paste a few example programs and change a few parameters is easy, but bridging from there to building substantial programs is a different game entirely. This talk is about how to teach programming successfully, through comprehensible design recipes, which anyone can follow, using languages and tools designed for beginners. This approach is probably different from how you learned how to program, or how you're used to teaching. It is more effective, however, as it teaches more material successfully to a broader spectrum of people. It is also more enjoyable.