If everyone agrees with you, you are probably not innovating, you are conforming faster. History’s real breakthroughs did not come from consensus but from heretics, hackers, and the endlessly curious. In this talk, Michael Carducci challenges the myth of collective wisdom and explains why the crowd is almost always optimized for the past. Through stories of unconventional thinkers, from computing pioneers to magicians who redefined wonder, he reveals the recurring patterns behind genuine innovation: discomfort, doubt, and persistence in the face of disbelief.

Attendees will learn how to identify the hidden forces that suppress new ideas, trust intuition even when it runs against consensus, and nurture the curiosity and courage that fuel meaningful change. This session is a call to those who question norms and experiment at the edges, the place where all real progress begins.

What You Will Learn

Why consensus often inhibits innovation and creativity How to recognize and resist social and organizational forces that suppress new ideas Practical ways to cultivate curiosity, intuition, and courage in your work

Who Should Attend

Developers, innovators, leaders, and creators who challenge convention and seek to build ideas that move technology, and people, forward.

Tests are code, too, but they don't get as much attention, often leaving messy, hard to understand tests. Poorly factored tests can also make refactoring production code more difficult, resulting in even messier code.

In this session, we'll start with what we need from a good test, using AssertJ and JUnit features to make it readable and maintainable. We'll walk up the ladder from Helper methods, shared Factory Methods, all the way to Test Data Builders, discussing how and when to make the transition between them. We'll look at test "smells" and how to repair them, using Parameterized Tests. If time allows, we'll see how to "retarget" your tests when extracting a new production class from existing code.

While the code is in Java, the principles and techniques apply to most languages.

Bienvenue dans l’atelier du Père Noël 2.0 !

Pour ce 17e jour de notre calendrier de l’Avent Coda, on vous propose un défi spécial : refactorer un code logistique elfique qui a mangé trop de spaghettis.

Au programme:

Découverte de notre calendrier de l’Avent et en quoi c'est un terrain de jeu idéal pour s’entraîner. Object Calisthenics: 9 règles d’or pour muscler votre code (et dire adieu aux if interminables !) Code Kata en pair programming: relever un défi de refactoring sous contraintes, avec un objectif : garder les tests verts tout en rendant le code plus lisible/maintenable. Présentation des résultats: les binômes pourront partager leur version et on pourra comparer les approches. Live coding: refactoring en direct, avec explications et astuces pour éviter les pièges. Conclusion: ce qu’on retient, et comment / quand appliquer ces techniques au quotidien.

Pourquoi participer?

Pratiquer le refactoring en conditions réelles (avec des tests qui ne mentent pas !)

Découvrir des techniques de clean code applicables dans tous vos projets

Prérequis : Un IDE ou un éditeur de code et l'envie d'aider le père Noël et les elfes !

Langages possibles: Java, C#, PHP, TypeScript.

Liens utiles:

Calendrier de l'Avent disponible ici

Notre serveur Discord pour rejoindre l'aventure