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!

London Code Dojo 23

A belated summary of London Code Dojo 23 which centred around learning how to use Meteor.

What Went Down

This didn't really follow the traditional format of the London Code Dojo as we were focussing on a single technology and we weren't doing TDD! *shock horror*

Meteor is a new and exciting JavaScript framework for creating web application ridiculously fast. There are some very powerful concepts in there and we were introduced to them through enhancing the Leaderboard example.

I was lucky enough to "pair" with Ole and Dave and the code we hacked out is available here: https://github.com/arkangelofkaos/CodeDojo23_Meteor_Leaderboard

My Impressions

The learning curve is brutal
Throughout the night, we kept running into brick walls due to some completely foreign pieces of knowledge you have to have. Meteor is apparently tied quite closely to a MongoDB under the covers, so if you don't know Mongo at all, you are stuffed! Trying to wrap your head around the general data interaction isn't trivial either.

JavaScript is still hard to work with
Having gotten very used to IntelliJ and all the magical help it offers you with Java, using JavaScript still feels really painful. No doubt it is a lack of knowledge on the available tools out there but to me JavaScript still falls down with regards to IDEs and proper debugging tools...

Lessons Learnt

Meteor can deliver feedback fast
The main selling point on Meteor is the sheer speed with which you can develop. Once you have the program running, you can see your code changes take effect in the browser right away. There is no refresh necessary! For simple web applications that you need to throw together quickly for a proof of concept, Meteor is your best bet!

JavaScript is evolving rapidly
With the emergence of so much new and exciting stuff in the JavaScript world, there is a lot to get excited about. AngularJS, Yeoman and Meteor are shining examples of this and I look forward to seeing more great stuff to come :)

The Darker Side Of Software Metrics

Tonight I went to go see @sleepyfox give a presentation on software metrics which was renamed at the last minute to "The Darker Side Of Software Metrics".

To summarise, the talk was very much on how software metrics can not only be useless but actually detrimental in software development. Many random pieces of wisdom were dolled out and overall the talk was very amusing and informative.

The recording of the video is in fact already available here, many thanks to the awesome people of Skills Matter!

Feedback 

• Highly enjoyed the comical style, good comedy is always welcome in a presentation!
• Great to encourage audience interaction and engagement
• Be wary one person doesn't dominant this though
• Some of the jokes may have been either too estorectic or given without context.
• Perhaps frame jokes so they highlight a point better?
• Talk lacked structure (from being unfinished), it was hard to follow the overall point on some slides.
• Perhaps use more "sign-posting" to guide the audience
• Have clearer overall message before introducing a bunch of quotes/slides?

Feelings

• My most important takeaway was the emphasis on how no metrics can ever help you predict the future.
• Software estimation for this purpose is therefore implied to be futile.
• The question then is "how do you then hit time requirements for projects?"
• One of the quotes said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
• Similarly, perhaps: "Metrics are useless but measuring is everything."