What is of Interest to you at the Moment?

[neilmanuell]

No description provided.

[mnem]

At the moment I'm interested in things I mostly haven't started working with yet (because reality becomes dull):

• Infinite Axis Utility Systems: which is basically an interesting way to create game AI rather than real AI. It's a purposefully pretentious name, apparently.
• OculusVR: I have one of the dev kits on order but no idea when it'll arrive or when I'll get time to play with it. I'll probably bring it along if it arrives in time though :)
• C++11/14: I've decided it's time I put away my lifetime vendetta against C++ because the latest revisions look almost sane.

As I said, I have no real experience in any of those yet, but I could probably make something up :) The AI one is likely to be the one I explore the most before October, but it's pretty game specific so I'm not sure if it will be of general interest.

[angerelle]

I'm currently piloting AngularJS (in a refresh of a project that is currently Flex based). I really want to get automated end to end tests running and keen on getting BDD working properly (at all!) all the way from business to developer and back again. I'm also learning about managing people, building a team, dealing with effects that technical decisions have on people, just learning where I fit into the role of technical lead, what I can bring. I'm a bit self obsessed at the moment, but sure this will have passed by October :-)

[Stray]

Sounds bloody challenging, Angela!

To be honest, I've barely worked for a year until this last month - only dribs and drabs between the dramas. BUT all that is a-changin'.

My main project is still Air / Flash. I've recently picked up some evenings-and-weekends banner work (thank you Neil!) for Google DoubleClick - I'd sworn off of that sort of throw-away stuff but I'm working direct with the client and they're a music publishers, so it feels like a domain in which capitalism and disposable content isn't misplaced.

The banner stuff is making me get interested in tooling for small jobs. When is building your own tooling actually worth it?

[Just realised these may be the world's only TDD'd banners]

Interesting that so many folks are transitioning into management... the other thing I'm doing is writing my Dad's book, which is on "Attractive leadership" - which is his bringing together of complexity sciences and some social sciences stuff.

It has relevance to user story / requirements / spec / estimating blah blah as well... so maybe a grounded whizz through that would be useful..?

On 19 May 2014, at 16:10, Angela Relle [email protected] wrote:

I'm currently piloting AngularJS (in a refresh of a project that is currently Flex based). I really want to get automated end to end tests running and keen on getting BDD working properly (at all!) all the way from business to developer and back again. I'm also learning about managing people, building a team, dealing with effects that technical decisions have on people, just learning where I fit into the role of technical lead, what I can bring. I'm a bit self obsessed at the moment, but sure this will have passed by October :-)

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[neilmanuell]

@Stray hows your AI book going?

[Stray]

'tis abandoned - can't afford to be working unpaid now and the hourly rate for even a successful book is about 3 pence :)

On 19 May 2014, at 16:26, neil manuell [email protected] wrote:

@Stray hows your AI book going?

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[Stray]

Swift swift swift swift! Which looks rather like the ECMA-6 / js.next stuff that Till gave us a rip through a couple of TH's ago, non?

[Stray]

Also... I'm helping my Dad write a book on his life's-work stuff on complexity and capability and leadership. The complexity/capability stuff has applications in software design, team working, career planning - worms into everything really - so there is likely to be something very useful there, if people are interested.

[mnem]

They’ve pulled off the neat trick of making it look like every language :)

http://www.mrspeaker.net/2014/06/04/selling-swift/

Personally I thought of CoffeeScript and Rust. Maybe it’s a Rorschach language :)

On 6 Jun 2014, at 12:16, Stray [email protected] wrote:

Swift swift swift swift! Which looks rather like the ECMA-6 / js.next stuff that Till gave us a rip through a couple of TH's ago, non?

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[Stray]

That list is amazing! Thanks D!

[richardlord]

I started playing with Swift, just a little. It's certainly a big improvement on Obj-C. The lead developer was apparently influenced by "Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many others to list" - http://nondot.org/sabre/

[neilmanuell]

Well, my plan was this year to start learning android flavoured java. Not really interested in objectionable-c. But this might even start me considering mac based dev.

[tam203]

I'm definitely interested in Swift but it's definitely given me that "I'm I betting on the wrong horse" feeling, which is daft given the number of horses and how a bet on one horse can be transferred over to another and well the analogy breaks down. But yeah if anyone covers Swift I'm keen.

@Stray I'd be really interested in Attractive Leadership, complexity and capability and leadership and all that Jazz. As Scott Adams put's it we are moist robots and I'm interested in how to program myself and others.

For myself I'm considering talking around either Hackathons, what we can learn from them and if this is useful or transferable into day-to-day corporate development or about if it's important to shift (and recognise your) paradigms when you change languages/tools, how you might do this, etc (this is coming from a move from Flex to JS where I'm not sure we are doing this).