SoCraTes UK 2025 trip report

In May 2025 I attended my third SoCraTes UK conference. SoCraTes events are run as an Unconference, where the sessions are planned out on the day that they happen. sessions can be run by anyone attending, so there's no divide between speakers and attendees. Everyone is an attendee, and everyone is a speaker.

In previous years, there has been a training day, but that didn't happen this year. This was a shame, but it was still an amazing conference. It takes place at Milton Hill House in rural Oxfordshire, and we all gathered there on Thursday evening. One thing I love about the conference is that it still takes covid seriously, and everyone gets daily covid tests and masks. This year, one of the attendees immediately tested positive for covid, and isolated. So we were all spared a dose of covid! I tend to suffer pretty badly from covid, so I am very pleased with this policy. 

Once we'd all done our covid tests, we gathered for an introduction session. As usual, the event was facilitated by Matthew Butt, who does a great job of organising everyone, and making it an engaging event. We broke into groups, and discussed our previous experiences of SoCraTes events, or other conferences, and what we hoped to get from the conference. This helped plant the seeds for ideas for sessions.

On Friday morning after breakfast, we got together to discuss ideas, and then propose sessions for the day. Anyone can propose a session, and then pick a timeslot and a location. Despite  being smaller than previous years, there was still a great range of topics and sessions. Once we had our agenda, the unconference started.

 

I ran an introduction to XP, pairing and TDD. This ended up being attended by some experienced XPers, and we ended up discussing how to teach and promote XP. 

Next I went to a session called "Entropy of legacy software when all subject matter experts are gone". Someone had been given a complex legacy system to maintain and update, and were looking for advice. We discussed Approval Testing and the Strangler Fig pattern as good approaches. I think they learnt a lot and got some good takeaways.

After that, I went to an excellent discussion titled "AI code gen does not create and new problems. Prove me wrong!" The main idea was that we've always struggled with bad code being churned out and turned into complex legacy systems. AI can just speed up the process. But you can get AIs to code using XP practices - small slices, TDD, continuous refactoring etc to keep quality high.

I finished the day's sessions with a discussion on whether refactoring is a dying art. 

After dinner, we had some lightning talks, and then a few of us gathered for some wine and some songs. 

The next day was organised in the same way, and we soon had our agenda for the day.

 

I started the day with a talk on whether Clean Code is a golden hammer. Is it the solution to all our problems? The general consensus was that its not, and the Clean Code movment itself has become quite toxic.  

After that, I went to a session on bell ringing with small hand bells. A bellringer taught us how to do a traditional peel of church bells. As well as sounding amazing, it was a fun exercise in group dynamics, nonverbal communication, and the joy of communal problem solving.

After lunch a few of us got together and wrote a Socrates Song for the closing ceremony. 

Next I attended a discussion on whether all programming languages are converging. This discussion took place as we wandered through the beautiful grounds of the hotel. I'm not sure if we came to any conclusions, but the discussion was still fasciniating and enjoyable. 

I finished the day with a discussion on why people at work don't care about software craft, and how to change things. 

Then we had the closing cermenony, we sang our song, and we were done :)

 

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