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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, December 16, 2019 through New Year’s Eve)

It’s the last “Tampa Bay tech events” list of 2019…and of the decade!

The time around Christmas always sees a sharp decline in tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events, which is why this edition is listing the events for the last two weeks on the year. I hope you had a great 2019, and I’ll see you in 2020!

This weekly list, which I started in 2017, has been around for about three years. and I hope you’ve found it useful. The mailing list version is a relatively new thing — thanks to Justin Davis for the suggestions — and will continue into the new year and the new decade.

Monday, December 16

Tuesday, December 17

Wednesday, December 18

Thursday, December 19

Friday, December 20

Saturday, December 21

Sunday, December 22

Monday, December 23

Tuesday, December 24

Wednesday, December 25

(No events)

Thursday, December 26

Friday, December 27

Saturday, December 28

Sunday, December 29

Monday, December 30

Tuesday, December 31

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?

If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Scenes from the Computer Coach / High Tech Connect holiday party

Photo by Hubert Sacasa. Tap the photo to see it at full size. Tap here to see the source [LinkedIn].

From a short-term point of view, the overflowing parking lot, the place packed so full that it was difficult to get around, and the all-too-quickly disappearing food may seem like a bad sign.

But from a long-term point of view, this is a great sign for the Tampa Bay tech scene: It means that even in the middle of the week in the holiday season with so many competing events and activities, Tampa Bay techies are so active in the community that they’ll fill up a large patio.

The Computer Coach / High Tech Connect holiday party took place at the Brick House last night. It wasn’t just well-attended, but attended by more than just the “usual suspects” whom you’d normally expect to see. There were a lot of new faces — or at least new to me — and this was great news.

Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap the photo to see it at full size.

One of the nice things about attending a party full of techies is that when you wear a meme, people get it:

Photo by Hubert Sacasa. Tap the photo to see it at full size. Tap here to see the source [LinkedIn].

Later on in the evening, Computer Coach’s Chief Success Officer Suzanne Ricci addressed the crowd. She talked about Tampa Bay’s debut on CompTIA’s list of top 20 metros for technology, and how a lot of the credit goes to the strong community that’s been forming here over the past decade. She also mentioned the recent good news: the opening of a new Drift office in Tampa Bay, which the company selected based on “a budding tech scene and a diverse talent pool.”

Photo by Joey deVilla. Tap the photo to see it at full size.

The past few gatherings in Tampa Bay have given me a sense of deja vu. It has a lot of similarities to Toronto in the early 2000s, when its tech scene was forming, putting together the key elements that would eventually transform it into one of North America’s top technology powerhouses. I see a lot of the same things happening here, and it’s thanks to Tampa Bay techies. Let’s keep it up!

Photo by Hubert Sacasa. Tap the photo to see it at full size. Tap here to see the source [LinkedIn].

More parties next week!

If you were looking for big Tampa Bay techie gatherings next week, you’re in luck. The Tampa Bay UX Group is celebrating both the holidays and their hitting 1,000 members on Tuesday…

…and if you’re looking for a similar event on the St. Pete side of the bay, the big holiday party jointly held by Suncoast Developers Guild, the Tampa Ruby Brigade, GDG Suncoast, and Women Who Code Tampa happens on Thursday at Suncoast Developers Guild:

Categories
Humor Programming

I had the same reaction

As its own creator says: “In C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg.”

Thanks to Jennifer Newsome for the find!

Categories
Programming Video

Worth watching: Videos on programming paradigms and object-oriented vs. functional programming

Watching programmers debate can sometimes be like watching a monkey knife fight.

Even in this day and age, when programming languages freely mix object-oriented and functional features, there are still arguments over which approach is “better”, or at least which one should be used in a given situation. Here are some videos that cover these paradigms; they might event give you some insight on how you can use them in your day-to-day coding.

4 Programming Paradigms In 40 Minutes – Aja Hammerly

Here’s a nice overview of four programming paradigms: object-oriented, functional, procedural, and logical, including the strengths of each. Start with this one.

Why Isn’t Functional Programming the Norm? – Richard Feldman

Functional programming is actually the earliest programming paradigm, but it’s not the primary paradigm of any of the top ten programming languages that programmers are using in 2019.

Object-Oriented Programming is Embarrassing: 4 Short Examples — Brian Will

In this video, Brian Will — an OO skeptic — takes four examples of “proper” object-oriented code and rewrites them using a procedural approach, resulting in what he considers to be “better” code. He’s not a big fan of the philosophy where data and code grouped together — he says “Let data just be data; let actions just be actions.” I leave it to the viewer to make their own call as to whether he’s right or wrong. (Hey, I figured I should throw in at least one curmudgeon into the list!)

FP vs. OO: Choose Two — Brian Goetz

When it comes to FP vs. OO, I’m of the “Why not both?” school of thought, and so in Brian Goetz.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, December 9, 2019)

We’re in the top 20!

Why did Tampa Bay make the top 20 in CompTIA’s 2019 list of U.S. metros for technology jobs? One of the biggest reasons is the Tampa Bay tech community, who not only do their day jobs, but make outstanding contributions to the tech scene. They get involved in events where they share their knowledge, make connections and friends, and gather together to build strong tech, entrepreneur, and nerd communities. That’s why I do this every week: I put together a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events to make sure that they can be found and you can attend them!

This weekly list is posted as a voluntary service to the Tampa tech community. With the notable exceptions of Tampa iOS Meetup and Coders, Creatives and Craft Beer — both of which I run — most of this information comes from Meetup.com, EventBrite, and other local event announcement sites. I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the dates and times listed here; if you want to be absolutely sure that the event you’re interested in is actually taking place, please contact the organizers!

Find out more about Tampa Bay’s status in the top 20 tech metros

You can find out more about Tampa Bay’s being one of the top 20 tech metros in the following places:

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be writing about ideas to help ensure that Tampa Bay stays in the top 20 on Global Nerdy. Be sure to check them out!

Monday, December 9

Tuesday, December 10

Wednesday, December 11

On Wednesday, Computer Coach and High Tech Connect will host their holiday party at Brick House (where Dale Mabry meets the 275) from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.. Join them for one of the big tech community get-togethers, and help them out with their Toys for Tots campaign! They’re taking donations of new, unwrapped toys.

Thursday, December 12

Friday, December 13

Saturday, December 14

Sunday, December 15

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?

If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Making Tampa Bay a better tech zone, part 1: We’re in the top 20, which is a good start!

Looking downtown at the Tampa skyline at night

Creative Commons photo by “Dennis Ludlow – Sharkshock”. Tap to see the source.

Tampa Bay’s in CompTIA’s list of the 20 best metropolitan areas in the U.S. for information technology jobs by landing in 19th place. They refer to us as one of the “up-and-comers” along with Columbus (12th on their list) and San Diego (17th), and ranked us just behind fellow Florida city Jacksonville (which they called one of the “surprises”) and just ahead of Baltimore. It’s yet another data point in a steady stream of good news for techies in the Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater metro area.

A little background: CompTIA is the short form for The Computing Technology Industry Association. They’re a non-profit that issues professional certifications for IT pros, such as computer technician, cloud, Linux, networking, pen testing, project management, security, servers, and so on. They also produce over 50 industry studies that track industry trends, and one of these is the CompTIA Tech Town Index.

To compile their Tech Town Index, CompTIA took the U.S. metro areas with populations over 250,000 and selected the 20 with the most tech job postings during the period from August 2018 and July 2019. They then ranked these cities based on the following criteria:

  • The number of IT job ads
  • A “location quotient”, which is the number of IT job ads divided by number of people employed
  • Cost of living
  • Wages, adjusted for local cost of living
  • Projected job growth over the next year
  • Projected job growth over the next 5 years

Here’s a map showing the cities that made this year’s Index…

…and here’s the list of those cities:

Click the list to see it at full size.

Here’s what CompTIA has to say about Tampa Bay in their writeup. I added some emphasis to the key take-away:

The Tampa Bay region, which includes Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, has long been considered a top vacation destination. But city leaders want more for this area and their efforts to transition the economy from one based on traditional construction, agriculture and tourism businesses to an economy built on technology are paying off. The investment opportunities in Tampa Bay are plentiful and the area is now home to more than 150 tech startups—just one factor leading to its debut at no. 19 on our list of tech towns.

In addition to the obvious perks of 75-degree days year-round and a daily dose of vitamin D, attractive tax structures and innovative research centers are just a few reasons why Tampa Bay has become so appealing.

But perhaps the most important attraction is a clean slate—uncharted territory. With nearly 43,200 IT jobs posted last year and IT jobs estimated to grow by 6% in the next 5 years, Tampa Bay has the numbers to bolster this growth. In fact, Forbes recently named the area no. 2 on its list of “Top 10 Best Cities for Young Entrepreneurs.”

Companies like Citi, Verizon and WellCare are hiring in Tampa and local IT talent can expect to make a median salary of $79,553 a year. The cost of living is slightly higher than the national average—just 2.3% higher to be exact. When adjusted for cost of living, Tampa edges out Jacksonville in terms of getting more bang for your buck, and it is home to some of the most beautiful beaches in the state.

Next in this series: More good numbers for Tampa Bay!

Categories
Humor Programming

The five phases of software development

It wasn’t the answer the professor was looking for, but I’d have given it at least 6 out of the 10 points the question was worth.

If you search for “5 phases of software development”, you’ll find that there isn’t a complete consensus on what those phases are, or even if it’s just five.