Can't Grok, Won't Grok

Following on from a great three-way RCP session , wanting to keep the idea of remote programming sessions going - I’ve had another! This one was a session with a twist. There was an “Open Spaces” session planned for Saturday – sadly though, the day was cancelled. So, thanks to the marvel that is Twitter - myself, Jeremy Skinner ( @JeremySkinner ) and Mark Embling ( @splashtech ) decided (pretty much on a whim) that we will have an “Open Spaces” style RCP* session. * Still struggling to come up with a different name for this style of geek get-together.. Loose Plan Now, “Open Spaces” sessions really do rely on having, well, spaces . And since we are each sat in our home offices this proved interesting. Loosely, this is what we decided before the session: We each throw down some ideas of sessions we would like to complete (we listed these in Google Wave). We would pick the sessions we want to do as-and-when. If a session was not proving useful or productive, we wo...

Following on from my first post on “ Remote Pairing ”, last night I took part in my first coding “ménage-et-trois”, without even having other people in the room! Sara Stephens ( @SaraS85 ) and Johnno Nolan ( @JohnnoNolan ) were kind enough to join in a 3-way “remote collaborative programming” session – now I am not sure if we are to coin this or try and get it to stick, but let’s see what happens. Session Overview We pretty much used the same tools that me and Johnno used in the remote pairing session , primarily: Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 (IDE) Git (Source Control) Live SharedView (Screen/Attachment Sharing) NUnit (Unit Testing Framework) GitHub (Git Repository Hosting) Skype (Voice Comms) Google Wave * (Session Planning) * Feel free to ping me on Twitter or something if you need an invite, I have some going, just drop us your email and I will get it sent (be warned it takes a LONG time). The only really difference is Skype, since...

Following on from my first coding dojo , I had an idea that I really wanted to try and push forward. Remote Pair Programming by this, I simply mean pairing up with another developer and working on some code. The key thing being, you are both on your own machine in different locations . Why Remote Pairing? The reasons for this are simple: It’s flexible – you don’t need to commute, organise a place to go, book offices, equipment – anything. It’s cheap – you only really need equipment that 99% of all developers will already have. It’s unobtrusive – aside from not cutting into your schedule so much, it also allows you to keep your system configuration (whereas pairing with someone else on their machine means you can lose a lot). The focus is the code, not the environment you are working in. Why NOT Remote Pairing? It’s not as personal as working face-to-face with someone. Technical issues may arise which cause problems with the remote connection. It m...

So there it was, my first time.. A little scary, a little intimidating and seemed to be over in a flash.. I just got back from my first ever Coding Dojo . In short, a coding dojo is: A meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a programming challenge. They are there have fun and to engage in deliberate practice in order to improve their skills. “Deliberate Practice”? Deliberate practice is basically making sure you do things right rather than doing them to get the work done . When at work, we often need to be pragmatic and cut certain corners in order to meet deadlines/budgetary requirements and all the other crap that actually comes with writing software for the real world. This often means that some practices may be neglected. Coding dojo’s aim to put us in an environment where we can work to those practices, improve them and then integrate them into our working processes (at much lower cost). My First Experience The problem we were trying to face was...