Static diagrams on wikis and white-boards might capture the vision of architects, but they don’t much help programmers to understand how the code they’re working on right now fits into the architecture. Nor are the programmers warned when they violate the diagrams as they forge changes, line-by-line.

This is a huge problem – it is ultimately individual lines of code that make or break an architecture; and we know that a clean architecture will help teams develop a more flexible product, with less complexity, less wasted effort, etc.

Worse, without practical architectural guidance, programmers wrestle with invisible structures that emerge from thousands of inter-dependent lines of code. And being invisible, these structures become ever more complex, coupled, and tangled. In fact, uncontrolled structure actively fights against productive development. This talk shows how to rein in emergent code-base structures and gradually transform them into a cogent, defined architecture.

You will see how…

• Visualizing the emergent structure makes a code-base easier to understand.
• Restructuring to remove tangles and reduce coupling makes the visualized code-base easier to work on.
• Specifying layering and dependency rules converts good structure into a controlled architecture that guides the team as the code-base evolves and grows.

A key ingredient is a live visualization, inside the IDE, of the detailed code the programmer is working on, in the context of the overall architecture. In short, you will learn how bridging the architect/programmer divide can convert code-base structure from liability into an asset that actively works for development productivity.

Chris Chedgey is co-founder, product designer, and developer at Structure101 - a team dedicated to creating techniques and technology for transforming and controlling the structure of large evolving code-bases. During a career spanning 30 years, Chris also worked on large military and aerospace systems in Europe and Canada, including the International Space Station. He has spoken at many user groups and conferences including Oredev, JavaOne, JAX, Javaland, 33rd Degree, JFocus, and Devoxx.

Meeting Location: PROS

3100 Main
2nd floor
Room B
Houston, TX 77002
Map

Suggested Parking:

Park across the street in the parking garage on Elgin in any spot marked PROS Reserved, taking a parking receipt as you enter the parking garage. Parking is free after 7:00 PM, so you won't have to pay as you exit. Take the elevator to the 3rd floor of the parking garage and walk across the sky bridge. The HJUG meeting will be on the 2nd floor on the left just before you reach the elevator bank.

Meeting Sponsor: Structure101

According to the US Department of Defense, well structured software is delivered in half the time, at half the cost, and with 8x less bugs.

Structure101 is an agile architecture development environment (ADE) that lets the software development team organize a codebase.

Building its model direct from the code, Structure101 empowers architects to work with the team to maintain architecture rules, diagrams and action lists that organize a codebase into a modular hierarchy with low and controlled coupling.

Structure101 supports C/C++, Java, .Net, ActionScript, InterSystems Cache Objects, Pascal, PHP, Python, SQL and UML.

Structure101 won the 2008 & 2011 Dr Dobb's Jolt Productivity Award in the Architecture & Design category, and the 2012 JAX most innovative Java technology award.

About our venue sponsor:

PROS Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: PRO) helps companies around the globe realize their revenue profit potential. PROS is the only company with a solution portfolio that improves top- and bottom-line financial results simultaneously. B2B and B2C companies count on our sales, pricing and revenue management solutions to accelerate sales, formulate winning pricing strategies and align product, demand and availability.

As the largest publicly traded software company in Houston, PROS is proud of our world-class R&D team that’s more than 300 team members strong. Our company culture values ownership, innovation and a relentless commitment to “We Care.” Ask anyone about the best part of working at PROS, and the answer will be “our people.” PROS employees are the most caring, committed, knowledgeable and talented technology professionals around. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Java is the backbone of all our products. We’re continually looking for ways to remain on the cutting edge of technology, and we’re proud to be supporters and sponsors of Houston’s growing developer community. To find out more about what PROS is all about, please visit our website at www.pros.com.

Door Prizes and Giveaways! - must RSVP on Eventbrite to win

• JetBrains has donated one IntelliJ license to be raffled off at this month's HJUG meeting
• Hello2Morrow has donated a SonarGraph Personal license to be raffled off at this month's HJUG meeting
• Headway Software has donated a license of the new Structure101 Studio
• SemanticMerge has donated a one year license of their product to one lucky winner, and another to the speaker.

Meeting sponsored by Structure101 for Tangle free software.