Many of us have a rough idea of what side-effects are and a vague sense that they're bad. It's a shame we're not more precise about it, because when you really understand side-effects you have an excellent new lens through which you can judge individual blocks of code, larger architectural patterns, and even whole system designs. So let's start by clarifying our understanding of what side-effects are and how to spot them. We'll see how easily they arise, leaving code that's harder to understand,…

Some codebases are nicer to work with than others. This is true for applications, services, libraries, frameworks, even programming languages themselves. Is this a purely personal choice or are there universal characteristics of software that can make code a joy to work with? Daniel has been thinking about this for a long time, especially since he poked a stick at the SOLID principles for fun a few years ago and people came after him with pitchforks.

Extended Abstract
His recent post about why…

Everyone wants to innovate, the question is how do you change your environment to support innovation?
Gabrielle will introduce the innovation imperative; why innovation is a necessity, a look at the disruptors threatening the fundamental ways we do business, and how to create a sustainable innovation strategy. 
We then go to the mean streets of Chelsea, London and meet Riccardo Mariti of Riccardo's restaurant. Riccardo will show you need to disrupt your business before you get disrupted and the…

For most people, AI means robots taking human jobs or China’s surveillance of its citizens. Despite the hype around it and its image of progress, the real workings of artificial intelligence are not widely understood. Companies are already implementing a web of algorithms to optimize manual business processes. Most of the time, the larger IT organization is not included on the journey. This talk is an overview of how IT leaders can center the development of human teams in a world that is…