Dec 13, 2012

Want an opportunity for programming education? Join the global day of coderetreat!

I join the "Global Day of Coderetreat 2012" on December 9th 2012. I also joined one in 2011. So, this was the second time for me to join it :) In this entry, I explain followings to you:

  • What is Coderetreat?
  • What is the Global Day of Coderetreat?
  • How to maximize your educational effectiveness

What is Coderetreat?


Coderetreat is a retreat for programmers. Most programmers need retreat because they always have to work for next delivery and they don't have enough time to learn basic skills such as programming and testing. The purpose of this event is to give them an opportunity to learn basic skills in a place where there is not delivery date. 

Characteristics of coderetreat are follows:
A single Gosper's Glider Gun creating "gliders"
  • You have 6 pair programming sessions. Each session includes 45 minutes pair programming and 15 minutes retrospective. You change your partner each session.
  • You have to delete your code at the end of session. You write code from the scratch every time. This gives you a chance to try different way of design. Actually you have to think design of code differently because facilitator gives you design constraints each session.
  • You get a chance to learn object-oriented design, pair programming and TDD. Facilitator or other participants teach you by hands-on if you need it. 
  • You can have good chance to learn new languages because your partner may know only languages that you are not familiar with. You may use it for the first time but you will make program with your partner's help. Actually I tried Ruby, Java, Scala and JavaScript despite I usually use C/C++ in my work. 
  •  Free lunch and sweets are provided by sponsors. Yeah! Here are sweets at Tokyo site.


What is the Global Day of Coderetreat?

This time was not just a "Coderetreat" but the "Global Day of Coderetreat" because it held in many countries. You can see city list on the official site. 56 cities? I am not sure how many countries hold but it was global event !

We connected to India last year. We chat what was going on both site. I was very excited that we were doing same activity with global scale! 

How to maximize your educational effectiveness

You spend whole day for this event. You should make this event meaningful.

But how to do it? I think that it is better to try different way, learn from everyone and broaden your eyes. 

Here are my activity list for this time.

1. Use different language and testing framework from usual one.

I am embedded software engineer and I usually write C/C++ code. I sometimes write Visual Basic or Python code. I don't have opportunities to use other languages in my work but I am interested in other languages.

For C/C++ programmer, sometimes other languages and frameworks have good features and concepts. Learning new language cultivate your programming style. But it is little bit difficult for us to start learning by ourself because we don't know where we go at first. So ask your partner about language is better way to learn.

In my case, I had fun with Ruby and RSpec, testing framework for Ruby. You can write code with your intuition without deep understanding of language specification. That's really comfortable for beginners. And you can struct your test code by elements such as "description" and "context". Your test code will be easy to read.

Features of Ruby and RSpec are quite new to me and quite different from C/C++ world. You can't everything of other languages but you may be able to bring essence into your work. Your work will change.

2. Design your code with different way as usual

The purpose of this event is to give participants new experience. We should try little bit different way. 

For example, if you don't do modeling or object-oriented design during your work, you might design your code with array. But I recommend you to try object-oriented design. You might think:
  • What kind of object do we need? 
  • What responsibilities does each object have?
Thinking about these questions make your design better.

In my case, we tried different one. I used map and filter to overcome several constraints such as no if statements and no loop. With this idea, I could write shorter and smart code.

3. Try technical practice in ideal situation

Coderetreat is not real job. Even if you don't complete, no one gets angry. You can try any practice as you want.

For example, if you know TDD but you have never tried it, then try it in coderetreat. You will discover how it works.

I tried double test loop that is introduced in "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests". In this practice, we write end-to-end acceptance test first and write code for inside module with TDD to pass acceptance test.

I often see that many participants tend to focus on detail of components and end up with perfect components and incompletion of whole game. If you do this in your work, your project will collapse.

If you write acceptance test for one scenario and write code with TDD to pass acceptance test, you get a system that works for certain scenario early. There is another benefit. You found considering points for architecture design early. You can avoid some risks in your project.

4. Share what your were interested in during retrospective

At the end of each session, every pair do retrospective, wrote own thought about session on stickies and put them on the board to share your experience.

Facilitators usually pick up topics to share but you can ask them to share your topics. You will receive many feedback from other participants.



5. Communicate with participants in other countries

At this time, we have two tags for twitter. "#gdcr12" for global and "#gdcr12ja" for Japan. I tweeted for "#gdcr12" then @jbrains from Canada respond me quickly! It was really quicker response than I expected! It was very helpful. 


Thanks to @jbrains and @haradakiro, I found the video that introduce "Verbs instead of Nouns". Byt there isn't much information about that :( I don't understand what happens with that activity yet.

Conclusion

In this entry, I introduced coderetreat and how to maximize your educational effectiveness. This event is well structured and worth to join. If you want to get an opportunity to learn basic skills of programming and testing, this is good way for you:) Please join next time!

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