Coding Is Like Cooking

If you’re running a coding dojo, or if you’re an individual who likes to practice code kata, there are a number of websites which aim to help. In this post I want to review some of what’s out there.

http://codekata.pragprog.com/
The idea of the code kata was originally presented by Dave Thomas in his blog. This is the list of Kata exercises he originally suggested. The dates on the site say 2007 but it must have been at least a couple of years before that*. Some of these katas don’t actually involve writing any code, such as kata three. The focus is on general programming skills rather than TDD in particular.

http://codingdojo.org
The idea of practicing code kata in a group and calling it a Coder’s Dojo was presented by Laurent Bossavit and Emmanual Gaillot at XP2005. Codingdojo.org is their site for the community, and has some helpful information if you’re looking to join or set up a dojo. There is also a catalogue of Kata descriptions. In the past I’ve personally contributed quite a bit of material to this site, but I’ve recently become frustrated with the amount of spam on it.

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gpollice/Dojo.html
This is an article rather than a whole site, but it gives one of the best summaries of a coding dojo that I’ve seen on the web.

http://katacasts.com
Corey Haines set up this site in 2009 and his original intention seemed to be to publish a screencast of a kata performance each week. Unfortunately the most recent screencast on the site is from July 2010. There is a lot of good stuff on there to watch, though – notably versions of the StringCalculator kata in almost any programming language you can think of. I really like the idea of screencasts of katas, since for me katas are all about practicing the moves of TDD and becoming expert with your language and editor/IDE. I’m not half as interested in the code you end up with than the route you took to get there. I like that Corey and others comment on the various performances and people learn from watching each other.

http://cyber-dojo.com
As I understand it, Jon Jagger created this tool to help development teams improve their collaboration skills. He’s been round several conferences using it as a kind of game for learning about practices such as pair programming, clean code, TDD, and all the people issues related to working in a team. It’s a fun activity for a group of programmers to do together, but to get the most out of it I think you need a facilitator who will help you understand what was happening and what there is to learn from it.

http://codingkata.org
This site still claims to be in beta, but there is quite a bit of material already. The philosophy seems to be to try to get people to have fun by playing with code, and also to learn new languages. There’s no particular emphasis on TDD. There is a catalogue of katas, and for each one it provides starter projects you can download into your IDE. When you think you’re done, it will check your solution for correctness and let you upload the code for public viewing. There doesn’t currently seem to be any support for uploading screencasts, or giving people comments and feedback on their solutions.

http://codersdojo.org/
This site is also quite new, but seems very promising. The aim seems very much to encourage collaboration, feedback, and becoming better at TDD – key elements of a face-to-face coding dojo. It provides tools that analyse your performance of a kata, not at the level of ‘does the code work by the end’ but at the level of ‘what were the moves you made to get there’. Each time you run the tests it records the code before and after, and whether the tests passed or failed. There are tools to let you go through a kata performance, look at the moves made and suggest improvements to the performer.

At present the only language supported is Ruby, but that is a great language for practicing TDD in 🙂 There is also no catalogue of katas to try – it just points to codingdojo.org.

What sites have I missed?
There are a number groups holding regular coding dojos in various parts of the world, and many have their own websites. Several of these are also full of helpful information, but they’re not quite what I’m after. I’m looking for sites that are addressed to the whole online community. Please write me a comment and point out sites I should know about!

* Laurent and Emmanuel credited Dave Thomas with the idea in 2005 when they presented the coder’s dojo, Jeff Attwood credits him in and article dated 2008, and wikipedia says he published code katas before Jan 2006.

I’m very excited to announce the launch of my company website, at http://bacheconsulting.com. The site has information about the coaching and training I offer, links to this blog, my videos on YouTube, and my twitter feed. My hope is that it gives an indication of my areas of expertise, and what you can expect if I come to work with your development team.

The site was built for me by my friend James Pink, who was very helpful with ideas for site layout and content. He also created my company logo from some sketches I did, and a rather dodgy photo of me hanging my head upside down with one ringlet of hair sticking out. Quite a tricky shot to take by yourself, even if your phone does have two cameras!

The pictures on the site are mostly from conferences – happy memories of good sessions at Agile 2008, XP2009 and XP2010. I’m very grateful to all the photographers for giving me permission to use them. I enjoyed searching through all the conference pictures, these guys really know what they’re doing with a camera, and seem to catch just the best moments. The profile shot I’ve been using for a couple of years now was taken by my friend Margaretha Schölin, when we were in China on a business trip together. More happy memories, thanks Maggan 🙂

I’d also like to thank the people who agreed to be quoted saying nice things about the work I’ve previously done with them. I’ll return the favour sometime soon, I’m sure.

So now all that remains is to hope that some more companies (preferably those in or near to Göteborg) will notice my site and want to hire me to help them learn agile engineering practices!

I travelled to Oslo last weekend, to take part in Agile Coach Camp Norway. This was an open space conference organized by some enthusiasts, not for profit. I became interested in going to the conference when I heard some other agile coaches tweeting about it. I’ve just started my career as a kind of agile coach, and I’ve always enjoyed the open space parts of other conferences I’ve attended. I hesitated though, since I have quite a technical focus. What clinched it was when Johannes Brodwall signed up – an excellent programmer who shares my interest in using Code Kata for teaching and learning Test Driven Development.

I was surprised to see Bob Martin in the hotel reception when I arrived – he had come on a whim since he was in Oslo that day. He spent some time on the first evening telling the story of how the agile manifesto came about, and his involvement. He’s an impressive speaker, even when improvising. Bob didn’t stick around for the rest of the conference, and he missed out on some really good discussions.

We began the main part of the conference with a “coaching dojo”, which Rachel Davies invented by analogy with a coding dojo. It was fun practicing coaching one another, and getting feedback from people who are used to giving good feedback. It really set the tone for the whole weekend.

After lunch, we had the open space opening session, and loads of sessions were proposed. I suggested 4, and ended up being very pleased I’d done them. I got some great feedback about a short coding dojo I ran – being coached in my facilitation skills was very valuable for me, and the participants seemed to appreciate learning more about the coding dojo format I use.

It turned out that Johannes and I weren’t the only technically-focused people there, and we shared lots of ideas about code katas and teaching TDD. Everyone agreed that success with agile needs developers to change the way they work, and most struggle with TDD. “Parachuting” a trainer in for a couple of days might help developers understand they could work differently, but getting them to actually make changes is much harder. I’m hoping for some success with repeated regular coding dojo sessions with a team. I’ll have to report back when I have more experience of actually doing this.

Another highlight was discussing using games for teaching agile, and in particular teaching agile engineering practices. Jon Jagger has his “cyber-dojo” collaborative programming game that he has released open source, and a “Kanban 1’s game” which he uses for teaching teams about limiting work in progress, and keeping work items small. We talked about the fact that many games are released under the creative commons attribution license, and coaches share them with each other. The games in themselves may take time and effort to create, but Jon and many of the other coaches there felt they don’t lose by sharing them, quite the opposite. They get feedback from others and help to improve the games. I wondered if they were worried about losing business to cheaper rivals who just took their materials, but people seemed confident that the skill of the facilitator is so crucial in the success of a game in achieving learning goals for the participants, that they would not lose out.

It was an intense weekend, with a couple of lovely walks in the snow, and good food together with interesting company. I learnt a lot about coaching and made new friends. I’ll be looking out for similar conferences in future 🙂

The world need more and better programmers. Jason Gorman recently wrote this post encouraging people to start offering software apprenticeships, as an alternative to computer science degrees.

He writes:

“our computing education in [the UK] is preparing students for a career in a version of computing most of us don’t recognise. Students devote the majority of their time learning theory and skills that they almost certainly won’t be applying when they get their first proper job. Computing schools are hopelessly out of touch with the reality of computing in the real world. While employers clamour for TDD or refactoring skills, academics turn their noses up at them and focus on things like formal specification and executable UML and compiler design, along with outdated and thoroughly discredited “software engineering” processes.” — Jason Gorman

Jason ends his post with a call to arms – if you’re a good software developer, get yourself an apprentice, and start training them. It’s the same message I heard from Dave Hoover when he visited Göteborg recently. I think he also sees a multi-year apprenticeship as a better alternative for training programmers than a computer science degree.

I also recently came across this article, written by a computer science teacher in the US, with the following paragraph:

“I no longer teach programming by teaching the features of the language and asking the students for original compositions in the language. Instead I give them programs that work and ask them to change their behavior. I give them programs that do not work and ask them to repair them. I give them programs and ask them to decompose them. I give them executables and ask them for source, un-commented source and ask for the comments, description, or specification. I let them learn the language the same way that they learned their first language. All tools, tactics and strategies are legitimate. ” — William Hugh Murray

So clearly some academics are teaching in creative ways. Rather than abandoning computer science degrees, might it not be better to improve their content?

One of the things about the XP conference is that it brings together industry and academics, and lets them hear from one another. How to teach programming is a very important topic that is often discussed there. XP2005 for example was held at Sheffield university, where I remember chatting to one of the professors, and being impressed by the way they used eXtreme Programming as part of their undergraduate course.

Another thing that happened at XP2005 was the first coding dojo I attended, and I believe the first one ever held outside of France. It was presented by Laurent Bossavit and Emmanuel Gaillot, founders of the Paris dojo. I was excited to discover a context in which I could improve my practical programming skills, in regular short bursts, alongside a continuing paid job.

So one of the things I do in my new life as an agile testing consultant is to use the coding dojo format to teach people how to program better. We’ll do code kata exercises and practice Test Driven Development, Refactoring, and discuss what Clean Code looks like. So far the reaction from professionals I’ve done this with has been very positive. Lots of people who have been coding for years appreciate the chance to learn new practical skills.

I’m also getting involved in more formal education, this spring I’m teaching a three week course in automated testing, as part of a “Kvalificerad Yyrkesutbildning” in software testing. This is a one year full time course for students wanting to learn a practical skill, as an alternative to going to university and studying a more academic subject. In Sweden you can get a student loan while you’re studying this course, and part of the time is spent working in a company gaining on-the-job experience.

I’m starting to plan how I’m going to teach TDD, BDD, and how to use tools like Selenium, Fitnesse, TextTest and Cucumber. I think it’s going to be very hands on and practical, but also go into the general principles behind tool choice and writing maintainable automated tests. I’m helping to write a formal syllabus and exam, with criteria for grades awarded.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t like this strand of thought in the Software Craftsmanship movement that wants to abandon formal education. There are lots of ways to train software developers, and apprenticeship isn’t without its problems.

I think this is just the sort of thing we’ll be discussing at XP2011, where there will be a host of academics and experts from industry. Won’t you join us?

I’ve just been appointed to the role of Industry Programme Chair for XP2011, which will be held in Madrid in May. I’ve been to 7 of the previous 11 XP conferences and I am so pleased to be asked to contribute to the success of the conference this year by doing this role.

Rachel Davies is the general chair, and I am really looking forward to working with her and the other organizers. Rachel is one of those people I have met repeatedly at conferences and always has something interesting to contribute. More recently, I read her excellent book on Agile Coaching. I can’t remember exactly when I first met her, but I do remember meeting her former colleagues from Connextra, Tim MacKinnon and Steve Freeman. I can still picture them in the small minibus that picked us up from a tiny Italian airport in 2002. It was a hot summers day, and we were driven at high speed along small Sardinian roads to the lovely hotel Calabona by the sea and the historic walled city of Alghero. I remember being so impressed to meet some people who were actually doing eXtreme Programming for real.

There were so many inspirational people at that conference, it was really a turning point in my career. I just found the old conference programme online here, and it brings back so many memories!

I remember sitting by the pool discussing subjects like how to test drive refactoring with Frank Westphal and Steve Freeman. There was a firey keynote from Ken Schwaber encouraging us to start a revolution in software development world. I remember Joshua Kerievsky asking Jutta Eckstein to explain all about how she was doing XP with a team of over 100 people. Following David Parnas’ keynote about using a formal test specification language to define requirements I remember Martin Fowler opining about its usefulness or lack of it, (do read his blog post about it).

The colourful personality of Scott Ambler demonstrated his ability to break a plank of wood in two with his bare hands, as some kind of lesson to do with dedication and focus. The conference dinner at Poco Loco really was a little crazy, with a bunch of uncoordinated geeks going for it on the dancefloor while the local band played very loudly. The morning after everyone was rather subdued when listening to Enrico Zaninotto reading his keynote in halting English, relating XP to the history of manufacturing and modern lean ideals. Half the audience was having trouble staying awake which in no way reflected the quality of what he was saying. It was truly inspiring, and Mary and Tom Poppendieck in particular were listening in rapt attention.

Michael Feathers wore a T-shirt saying “Save the LSF”, and Geoff and I asked him why he was so interested in platform computing’s Load Sharing Facility. It turned out Alan Francis had recently become unemployed and Mike was helping in the campaign to “Save the Lightly Scottish Fellow”!

Laurent Bossavit was going round trying to attract people to his Birds Of a Feather session on the writings of Gerald Weinberger. Erik Lundh was taking about his team in Sweden who had done a complete XP iteration in 2 days when faced with an unexpected deadline. Steven Fraser seemed to be videoing everything and anything, including someone demonstrating the correct way to twirl Italian Spaghetti on a fork. Mike Hill was (as ever) being loud but friendly. Charlie Poole seemed to be full of insightful analogies and comments. Dave Hussman was really friendly too.

It was just fantastic the way the XP community welcomed us in, and particularly Kent Beck’s attitude was instrumental in that. My husband Geoff and I presented a poster at the conference with title “One suite of automated tests” based mainly on Geoff’s experiences with the tool that was to become TextTest. We turned up on the first day for a workshop about “testing in XP”, and Geoff was immediately controversial by saying that he didn’t do any unit testing, only this weird text-based testing thing using log comparison. He said he found it so successful that he used it instead of both the XP practices of functional and unit testing. I remember several people being quite dismissive of his ideas.

Later in the conference, Kent Beck made a particular effort to talk to us and we took our picture standing by our poster. Apparently he had been asking people to try to be inclusive and friendly to us after the somewhat negative reaction to our ideas. I think he wanted the newly-forming XP community to be welcoming and to embrace diversity of opinion.

So now I should turn this around and look instead to the future. I’d love it if even half the people I’ve mentioned in this post found time in their diaries to come to Madrid in May for XP2011. I wouldn’t want them to come alone though, there are so many fantastic and inspirational people who have joined the ever-expanding agile community since 2002.

I am every bit as keen now as Kent was then to see that the agile community embraces newcomers, and that the XP conference should provide a space where researchers and practitioners can freely discuss the state of the art. I hope we’ll make new friends and business contacts, learn loads, and have fun. Would you like to join us there?