Episode: 13

TDD & DDD from the ground up with Chris Simon

The Beer Driven Devs caught up with Chris Simon at NDC for a conversation about TDD, DDD, start-ups and allyship.

Chris is a CTO Coach helping startups realise their vision and new CTOs flourish in their roles. He also supports executives & boards with strategic technology advice, and engineering teams with training, mentoring and consulting in architecture, quality, domain-driven design and test driven development.

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The Show

  • 02:15 - Matt writes his first bug test test proving he wrote a bug
  • 03:10 - Behaviour Driven Dev (the other BDD) and testing external expectations
  • 06:45 - What are Requirements?
  • 08:30 - System constraints, and how can we reframe them
  • 14:45 - Lean thinking
  • 20:00 - ABM - “Always be Modernising”
  • 20:45 - Does TDD prevent YAGNI?
  • 21:45 - The definition a a Unit Test: To Test a Unit of Behaviour
  • 22:30 - TDD won’t prevent poorly designed systems
  • 23:00 - Consider Scalability from the Start
  • 28:45 - Building Adaptive startups
  • 30:30 - What exactly defines a CTO (Chief Technical Officer)?
  • 37:40 - [Book Recommendation] - Thinking in systems - by Donella Meadows
  • 38:40 - What is Polarity thinking?
  • 40:00 - Contextive - A suite of tools to immerse developers in the language of their users’ domains
  • 43:30 - Business rules vs application logic - is there a difference?
  • 49:00 - The Specification Pattern
  • 59:00 - Allyship & Peer-support - Allyship is the active, intentional & authentic support of people who are being marginalised & harmed by systemic discrimination
  • 1:00:00 - The Grapevine - Change is coming, you heard it on the Grapevine

The Beers 🍻