CodingDojo20080209
Thanks to everyone who attended the first event. It wasn't perfect, but I believed that everyone got value out of it. Most importantly, there was tons of great feedback (see below) which will help us make the next one even better.
Photos
A few photos were snapped during the event. They are currently hosted as a Flickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15936983@N04/sets/72157603883173852/
Time and Location
Feb. 9th, 2008 8:00 A.M.
9601 Amberglen Blvd.
Suite 140, Bldg G
Austin, TX 78729
Coding Challenge
The coding challenge was a simple console application which children and teachers can use to work on match skills much like multiplication flash cards. The code was written using VS2005 in C#.
Attendees
- Aaron Eastburn
- Alex Kazakov
- Bindiya Mansharamani
- Brian Loehr
- Chad Myers
- Greg Long
- Jason Meridth
- Jay Brownlee
- Jimmy Bogard
- Joe Ocampo
- Justin Dial
- Kerry MacLean
- Lee Basey
- Mark Anderson
- Matt Vasquez
- Pete Fink
- Ray Houston
- Scott Killen
- Sharon Cichelli
- Tim Hardy
- Tim Tonnesen
- Tom Jaeschke
There were a few others, but we didn't have cards for them. Please let us know who we missed.
Tools and Frameworks Used During Event
- TestDriven.NET
- ReSharper
- Keyboard Jedi
- VS.NET Macros - Jimmy Bogard, Joe Ocampo, Scott Bellware, JP Boodhoo
- NUnit
- Code Snippets - Scott Bellware
- Rhino Mocks
Books and Articles Referenced During Event
- Test Driven Development: By Example - by Kent Beck
- Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET - by James W. Newkirk and Alexei A. Vorontsov
- Extreme Programming Adventures in C# - by Ron Jeffries
- Working Effectively with Legacy Code - by Michael Feathers
- Mocks Aren't Stubs - by Martin Fowler
- What's in a Story? - by Dan North
Retrospective
Repeat - What worked well?
- Attendees had different levels of experience
- Introductions
- Great Learning opportunity
- Good choice of problem statement (succinct and universally known)
- Simple prep work ahead of time
- The fact that this session was held was a good thing!
- Lots of exposure to experience
- Interacting with TDD experts
- Honest open dialog
- Liked seeing Rhino Mocks in action
- Diversity in experience level
- I liked pair-programming with persons in-the-know
- Hands-on “real” coding
- I liked having some people that were knowledgeable of topic at hand. They were able to explain things in a way that is easy to understand.
- I liked the gathering of the minds to solve a problem.
Review - What caused difficulty?
- Better walk-troughs of what was done and why
- Once I realized that a mocking tool such as Rhino Mocks was required at the very end I wished I knew more about it.
- Size of dojo – too much going on
- Separate space for concept discussions. I had trouble following coding pair and concept discussions.
- Short time frame
- 8:00 A.M.
- Find a way to direct conversation to prevent multiples and lost conversation
- Side conversation and chaos detracted from designated speakers at times
- Start with a pair that has experience with TDD
- Not a lot of tests created
- Not everyone that wanted to try it could
Revise - What new are different things do we want to try in the future?
- Maybe continue this dojo bi-weekly on a regular basis?
- Smaller group
- Fruit in addition to donuts
- Multiple yet smaller groups each with a separate user story – at break, half of each team ping pongs.
- Speaker system to hear dialog
- Some more complete pattern for TDD newbies
- Have a ping-pong referee to keep pair moving towards Red, Green, Red.
- Name tags
- Don’t need breaks – it just causes loss of momentum.
- Too many discussions at the same time
- Define model before diving in – some level of design
- Increase audience’s chances to try TDD – switch more often
- Identify background items before hand so people can be up to speed
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