I’m very pleased to announce I’ve just published my first Pluralsight course – “Coding Dojo: Test Driven Development“! It’s based on the material in my book, converted to a video-friendly format along with audio commentary. If you purchase a subscription to the Pluralsight course library, you’ll get access to this video course, and hundreds of other courses aimed at software developers.

Since the video is also another iteration of my ideas and material, after I wrote the book, I’ve developed some themes, particularly around deliberate and incidental practice. I also had to focus more, and pick out the really important parts to talk about in the video. If you enjoy the video course, you might find the book contains useful extra material – especially the code kata catalogue.

I really think there is a big need in our industry for professional software developers to learn Test Driven Development and associated skills, and I can’t see it happening via the traditional method of instructor-led two day training courses. TDD is a practical coding skill that you actually have to do in order to get competent at it. It’s a lot more difficult in your average codebase than it needs to be, so a lot of people get discouraged and quickly go back to the way they wrote code before.

The Coding Dojo is a way to start a long term change in yourself and others in your team, and my hope is that the book and the video will provide you with the inspiration and means to get started.

2 Comments

  1. Eduard says:

    I very much agree. Doing is the best way to learn, and a coding dojo is a great structured way to get things going.

  2. Hugh Gibson says:

    Thanks for this. As CTO I have a conference coming up next week with a small team starting a new project. We have no experience applying TDD but have a great desire to do the project properly. Your course was perfect for me – showing me what a Coding Dojo is and how to manage it with the team. We’ll try and fit in a couple of Katas over the three days we have together, getting a start on learning TDD techniques. Next step: giving them all Pluralsight accounts so we can continue learning.

    We normally work in different countries and rarely get together in “meatspace”. Do you have any suggestions of techniques and tools to use for pair (or larger Randori) when working remotely? cyber-dojo is nearly there but you have to log out and in again.

    BTW there was a typo in the second module, 1st slide – “Leaning” not “Learning”.