London Code Dojo 24

Another belated summary, this time of London Code Dojo 24 and with it came a welcome return to the regular format.

WHAT WENT DOWN

This time we were all the way out in Richmond as eBay were kindly hosting us in their office canteen (hurray for free cans of soft drink). The kata for the night was simply to implement the Binary Search algorithm, which I realised I am very rusty at! >.<

The code I paired out with Santa is available here: https://github.com/arkangelofkaos/CodeDojo24_BinarySearch

MY IMPRESSIONS

Communication is an art
Working and interacting with new people is still very much a challenge for me. I find that I either click straight away with a person or it just feels awkward. Perhaps I should attend the communication dojo in future too!

Teaching is a must have skill
More and more I am finding that I can impart what little wisdom I may have on certain subjects to others! Learning how to effectively teach others is tantamount in the list of skills every developer should have. Something important to keep in mind for parenting as well!!! >.<

LESSONS LEARNT

Look before you leap
As always, I seem to be reacting to things rather than responding to them. In this kata I ploughed ahead without thinking hard enough about the algorithm or how the steps we were implementing would lead to the solution... This is converse to the sorting kata where we mindlessly copied the QuickSort algorithm. So I suppose the lesson is to plan upfront a little more and to take small educational steps!

How it is done is more important than having it done

I've come to the realisation that I'm still too hung up on "getting things done". In these code dojos, it really doesn't matter if you don't finish ANY of the exercise! The most important thing is to practice how you would do it perfectly. This means that it is absolutely fine to spend time simply clarifying the problem and sketching out a solution, that way everyone knows what is happening!