What is the Virtual Brown Bag?

Virtual Brown Bag is an online meeting where attendees can talk shop, share tips & tricks, and get help from others. You can learn more about it here.

Who can join and share?

Anyone! Jump on and speak up. We sometimes schedule guests to speak on particular topics but we always set time aside for normal brown bag discussions. Let us know if you would like to be a guest speaker.

Previous Meetings

  1. May 27th, 2021

    Book: Specification by Example, Impact Mapping, Book: Four Disciplines of Execution, WPF, Architectural Decision Records, Book: Grokking Simplicity, context mapping, book reading/listening, Podcasts, Operator Overloading in Python

  2. May 20th, 2021

    Consultant levels, book: Radical Candor, Architecture Kata

  3. May 13th, 2021

    Book: Grokking Simplicity, virtual conferences, liberating structures, Gather.io, "show me your spreadsheets'...

  4. May 6th, 2021

    Claude Schennon's autobiography, Hobbies, hacking package.lock

  5. April 29th, 2021

    DDD, Juval's book, context mapping, upfront design, separation of concern, React

  6. April 22nd, 2021

    Emacs (Windows, Mac, Linux), issues with Mac and PC, DDD, Improv, JetBrains Rider, Python.

  7. April 15th, 2021

    C# and F#, Discriminated Unions, Non-profit (villagebookbuilders.com), React, mentoring.

  8. April 8th, 2021

    SSH-agent, inventory management, business process, The Goal, payments processing and integration, observability/traceability, Whimsical flowchart, Obsidian (OSS version of Roam), Para method, CodeMaat, Gource.io

  9. April 1st, 2021

    DDD, Bounded Context, Ubiquitous Language, Microservices

  10. March 25th, 2021

    TypeScript, React Native, CSS Box Sizing, Types vs Interfaces in TypeScript, TDD benefits.

  11. March 18th, 2021

    TypeScript and Reactive Native, TypeScript's any vs unknown types, NextJS, Organizing React projects, Atomic Design, Design Patterns, Architecture, Shells and bash profile, ergonomic chairs.

  12. March 11th, 2021

    Application Security aspects that many people don't think about, Books (Fundamentals of Software Architecture, Your Code as a Crime Scene), Code Maat, Code City, Code Compass, NDepend, HTML Auto-Complete attribute, MS-Outlook tip to auto-dismiss passed reminders, Reflection in TypeScript

  13. March 4th, 2021

    Dealing with messy code, how to lead when you're not in charge, approach to code review, approaching to refactoring, Roam Research demo

  14. February 25th, 2021

    Troy Hunt's "Everything you ever wanted to know" post about password reset feature, authentication systems and identity frameworks, JamStackAttack.com, Python

  15. February 18th, 2021

    Rocketbook, ReMarkable, writing cover letters for resume, working for free, junior vs senior devs, using LinkedIn.

  16. February 11th, 2021

    TypeScript: Why?, React Admin

  17. February 4th, 2021

    Form builders, TypeScript

  18. January 28th, 2021

    Networks, hardware, Cypress.io, E2E tests, TDD, BDD, Roam, Notion, Evernote.

  20. February 4th, 2021

    Form builders, TypeScript

  21. January 21th, 2021

    Challenges with WinForms project, Uno Platform for Xamarin, Accessibility, Skia, Comet.

  22. January 14th, 2021

    Coding test interviews, interview scripts, TripleByte.com assessments... and, Linux.

  23. January 7th, 2021

    JavaScript's Symbol properties for secret data, Immer, Orgmode, AWS Certification

  24. December 10th, 2020

    Flutter, Ionic, Sindrehus (GitHub), "Frontends dying" discussion

  25. December 3rd, 2020

    Xamarin, Flutter, Cypress.io command overrides, LocalStack (AWS local), technical writing

  26. November 19th, 2020

    Job interviews, Azure Certification, Azure emulator, Node.JS, React Context and Context Provider.

  27. November 12th, 2020

    GitHub hack (youtube downloader), user stories, test organization (1 test fixture per class/component vs context-based), TypeScript (generics, unions, what's the minimal bar for devs to know), JavaScript ORM.

  28. November 5th, 2020

    Discussion on testing, GPT-3 (AI, neural network), asking about SOLID in interviews, what is good code?

  29. October 29th, 2020

    We talked about Microsoft certifications, past and recent experiences. We also spent some time talking about custom matchers in Cypress.io, and security-related static analysis tools.

  30. October 22nd, 2020

    Great discussion remembering the Alt.NET movement, and also talking about architecture katas.

  31. October 15th, 2020

    Obs and PPT automation, Books (Righting Software, .NET Architecture), DDD, Event Storming, CQRS, REST... great conversation!

  32. October 8th, 2020

    Some more talk about Mmhmm, anti-fatigue mats, home-office setups, nerves-project.org, IoT, Elixir, micro-services and data for dashboards, AWS and AWS Amplify.

  33. October 1st, 2020

    Mmmhmm (virtual camera, setup, experiences), EICAR test string, Spam Pull Requests, things we put in the resumes, databases: when to start thinking and making decisions about them...

  34. September 24th, 2020

    Cypress.io, Trust (the struggle is real... how to build trust?), OSS maintainers and leadership, Blazor.

  35. September 17th, 2020

    Xamarin, React, state management, data migration and source control, Surface Laptop, job interviews, DB natural IDs, managerreadme.com

  36. September 10th, 2020

    Mmhmm (making it for better virtual meetings), TypeScript, Swagger, Express.

  37. September 3rd, 2020

    Main smartphone apps we use, discussion on technical writing, top-level functions vs classes, Python.

  38. August 27th, 2020

    Houston Tech Fest, 3D-printed masks, Code Metrics (messy code), George's architectural talk and new talk on "computer pioneers you should now about", https://medium.com/a-computer-of-ones-own

  39. August 20th, 2020

    We talked about job searching, code challenges, job interviews, being manager or leaders and how to apply for such job. We wrapped things up with a quick discussion about "Human Code Reviews".

  40. August 13th, 2020

    Great discussion on books that all software developers should read. Also some talk about this post: "It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code". And to close the meeting of, some geeking out with a Python FizzBuzz implementation.

  41. August 6th, 2020

    Topics we discussed: looking for a job, helping out others, RocketBook, Replacing Jasmine with Jest on Angular projects, test style, Jest Custom Matchers, https://questions.wizardzines.com/

  42. July 23rd, 2020

    This week we talked about estimation techniques for projects, as well as API documentation.

  43. July 16th, 2020

    George had a question about C#, Generics, Reflection, which then led us to a TypeScript discussion, interface vs class, etc. Alper gave us a mini-presentation on Distributed Systems Design Principles: Lessons Learned from Udi's class

  44. July 9, 2020

    We've had a great conversation about communication challenges and techniques, including how to communicate through code, spoken language, Improv techniques, etc.

  45. July 2nd, 2020

    Our bud Tony shared his experiences learning React. We discussed a little about React vs Angular vs Vue. Then we talked abou Story Mapping and Impact Mapping. And last but not least, we had a conversation generated by asking folks on the call the following questions: 1. As a developer, what's most important to you? 2. What does "being a great developer" mean to you? Why?

  46. June 25, 2020

    We talked about upcoming free virtual events, Claudio's "Trusting IT" call for feedback, the "Badass - Making Users Awesome" book, George's code challenges, using generators, threading/pipeline operator, and the Rocketbook.

  47. June 18, 2020

    We've continued our conversation from last week, talked a little more about resumes, and also job interviews, developer challenges, etc.

  48. June 11, 2020

    Great chat about resumes! We've lost the 2nd half of the discussion due to technical issues, but still, there's good content in here.

  49. June 4, 2020

    We talked about a bunch of stuff this week! Books, Connecting, F# Conf, WebForm/WinForm, Android crash, Racket, FizzBuzz, The QA's Role in a Scrum Team. George brought up discussion on resumes and interviews It sparked many comments. We'll bring it back next week. We have even mentioned FoxPro. :)

  50. May 28, 2020

    George's "challenges": https://github.com/togakangaroo/daily, https://orgmode.org/, emacs, Org Babel

  51. May 21, 2020

    Arrange-Act-Assert, Given-When-Then, When-When-Then, Refining user stories, Righting Software (book), Architectural book, Software Architecture youtube channel, Google.dev, Azure App Service Static Apps with Svelte + Sapper, Top-Level Programs in C#9

  52. May 14, 2020

    We talked about Udi Dahan's Advanced Distributed Systems Design course, C#'s new feature: source generators, Security standards and considerations, Node and NPM, Tribes of Programmers, and some miscellaneous things, as usual

  53. May 7, 2020

    Talks on managing interruptions, Pomodoro Technique, finding opportunities and leveraging them, trust in IT, importance of tests, and a couple more miscellaneous things!

  54. April 30, 2020

    Advanced TypeScript.

  55. April 23, 2020

    Tips, processes, techniques, and tools to work remote effectively.

  56. April 16, 2020

    "Now" pages, importance of User Stories, and a lot of Emacs love.