Exploring Patterns, Practices, and Tools for Sustainable Code

May 3rd Cincy Clean Coders

May02
2012 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

Cincy Clean Coders meet again tomorrow, May 3rd at the same bat time, same bat place.

There are no plans for a lightning talk at this time, but please feel free to speak up.

Selfishly I’d like to discuss architecture a little bit.  I’d like to discuss a single-page application we built recently that took a different approach organizing components/pieces of the application and it’s impact on decisions, coupling and discovery.

From there we can head into a Kata, Randori, or diverge as the group sees fit.

See you there!  Don’t miss the Meetup.com to let everyone know you’re coming.  More people => better discussion.

Posted in Meetings

April 5th Gathering & Poll

Apr02
2012 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan
Lightning Talk

@markhaskamp would like to do a lightning talk on Managing Code Complexity.  An expanded version of Mark’s topic will be held at the May Dayton .Net Users Group.

Kata

The previous Dayton Clean Coders sent out a What would you like to practice poll.  This worked out pretty well, because we were able to discuss a full on dilemma that someone was struggling with.

I thought we could try something similar for Cincy Clean Coders so I put this poll together.  Please fill in the Other if there is some topic of problem you want to discuss.

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Cincy Clean Coders 2012

Dec28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

The inaugural year of Cincy Clean Coders has been awesome.  It is incredibly invigorating to see such a passionate, engaged group of professionals explore patterns, practices and tools for sustainable group.  I’m looking forward to seeing what creative and crazy ideas people have in the New Year.

With this being a natural reflection point, I want to call out the mushy objective of Cincy Clean Coders and ask if this truly reflects your objectives for coming:

Cincy Clean Coders provides an unpressured environment for community members to teach , learn and experiment with software development patterns, practices, and tools for creating high quality software which can change at the pace of our customers.

What do you think?

I’d love to hear what everyone has gotten from Cincy Clean Coders this first year and what they hope to gain from 2012.  Leave them in the comments are bring them to the next event you can join.

A New Year!

So with a blank canvas ahead of us, the first Cincy Clean Coders of 2012 will take place at our gracious host Max Train on January 5th from 6pm to 8pm.  Please feel free to prepare a lightning talk… or don’t.  No need to tell me in advance, just say something when you arrive.  We will continue our trend of BYO Food.

One objective of mine for 2012 as it relates to Cincy Clean Coders is to have a more deliberate…

Focus on Patterns, Practices and Techniques

I’ve found that at both Clean Coders and Code Retreat that the focus easily becomes the kata problem itself and “completing” as much as possible.  In retrospect, this seems quite natural given our drive for done-ness in our day jobs.  This is in direct conflict with the unpressured environment we would like to have.

So leave behind code your mom would be proud of and have a safe and happy New Year.  See you in 2012!

Posted in Meetings

Chock Full of Software Craftsmanship

Nov28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

This is an exciting week full of craftsmanship goodness!

Thursday the 1st is the December Cincy Clean Coders.  The group decided at our last Clean Coders to continue the Roman Numerals problem this wee so as not to have to learn a new problem context.  This will allow us to focus on skills, patterns, and evolving our skills.

To top it all off, Saturday is Global Day of Code Retreat here in Cincy.  Doors open at Pinnacle Solutions at 8am.  We’ll be starting promptly at 9am.  Please have your environment ready to go.  You won’t have much time to do so the day of the event.  Find out more here.

Posted in Meetings

@unclebobmartin comes to @cincycleancode

Oct24
2011 1 Comment Written by sudhcha

Alas! no, he’s not as of now. But we wish it becomes true one day. However there’s still good news, keep reading forward.

10/6 Meeting Review
We did the KataPotter using the Randori technique again. A poll was conducted to choose the technology and node.js emerged as the winner over C#, Java and Ruby. Thanks to Ryan Cromwell, the environment was setup quickly and the kata progressed fruitfully with Vim, Guard and Expresso. There were interesting discussions during the kata (and that’s no news). The meeting ended with announcements including the recent success mantra of Cincy geeks – Southwest Ohio GiveCamp.

Now the good news part – we have a chance to see and listen to Uncle Bob‘s words of wisdom. As promised in the last meeting, we’ll be airing Episode 1 of Clean Coders in the next meetup, a high content education that will hold your attention and stimulate your thoughts with its impactful and energetic style (as promised in the website). Be there and you’ll get answers to the following questions -

  • What is Clean Code?
  • Does Clean Code Matter?

The video will replace our lightning talk after which we’ll get to code the group selected kata. As always, we’ll be at the MaxTrain facilities in Mason, OH on Thu 11/3. Directions can be found here. Don’t forget to bring food and drink as we’re not actively looking for a sponsor.

Posted in Meeting Reviews, Meetings

Randori and… Our Own Code Retreat!

Sep02
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

Cincy Clean Coders continues to evolve and I’m loving the direction that everyone has taken the group. 

Announcement

Last night I was really excited to announce that we are going to be hosting a Code Retreat in Cincinnati on December 3rd.  Mark Haskamp recently attended one in Chicago and offered to be our veteran and help facilitate.  Mark also talked with his company Pinnacle Solutions and they are not only hosting us, but will be helping sponsor food.

If you don’t know about Code Retreat here’s a quick snippet from the site:

Coderetreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take part in focused practice, away from the pressures of ‘getting things done’, the coderetreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object-oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

You’ll need to RSVP (open immediately) out on the TechLife Cincy Meetup.com.  Thanks to Mike Ball and Joe Herbers for getting that set up.

9/1 Meeting Review

Last night we did FizzBuzz using the Randori technique. I described the technique:

  • There is one or two drivers
  • The audience interacts/suggests/questions/heckles the driver(s)
  • Driver(s) change at some interval or pattern

I asked the group to choose a change mechanism for changing the driver including timeboxes, PingPong, NTests, etc., but someone suggested using a Queue since we had an odd # of attendees.  This meant if you write a failing test this time you would be passing a test next time.

There was a ton of interaction.  We had a couple of people go up as pairs.  Some came in late, but the early group chose VS + C# + NUnit + NCrunch + ShouldFluent.  It was great to hear some “why do we need that” and “we’re telling, not asking".  This became apparent when we started into the PacMan kata.

Our next meeting will be October 6th.  Let us know if you can make it.

Posted in Meeting Reviews

Cincy Clean Code Retreat

Aug22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by sudhcha
We had a great lightning talk from @markhaskamp who recapped the Code Retreat event he attended in Chicago. He was telling how they had several 45 minutes long coding session where-in after each session they had to present, throw away their code and start afresh in the next session. He laid stress on several clean code principles including DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) – Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. One of the interesting examples he showed was how repetition of logic is present even in same parameters passed to multiple functions thereby violating the DRY principle.
Afterwards, we split into 4 teams -1 Java and Ruby and 2 C# and worked on the same Game of Life kata that was taken up in Code Retreat. After one hour of intense and interesting coding, each of us presented our code and the associated tests. As always, interesting discussions and ideas were brainstormed during the code presentations. The meeting closed with @markhaskamp giving a brief introduction and working session of ApprovalTests. The words spread around quickly and he’s talking on the same framework in CINJUG this month.
Posted in Meeting Reviews

Ping Pong Pairing

Aug01
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

At our last meeting @sudhcha introduced the group to the Anti-If Campaign.  We then embarked on the Business Rules Kata.  The twist this week was that we also had a laptop open on the projector in which the group used Ping Pong Pairing to execute the Business Rules Kata.  The extra objective to minimize the use of if-statements made for some lively discussion at the end.  In all I think it was our best Cincy Clean Coders yet!

We meet again this week, August 4th.  As always we’ll be starting at 6pm and ending around 8pm at the MaxTrain facilities in Mason, OH. Directions can be found here.  We don’t yet have a lightning talk, but if you’re interested come and let someone know. No planning required!

Also, we’ll make sure to push the source from any group pairing katas out on github.

Posted in Meeting Reviews, Meetings

Anti-If at the next Cincy Clean Coders

Jul06
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

We’re excited to have a new Lightning Talk tomorrow as Sudhin Varghese (@sudhcha) discusses the Anti-If Campaign.  From their site:

Avoid dangerous IFs and use Objects to build a code that is flexible, changeable and easily testable, and will get rid of a lot of headaches and weekends spent debugging!

That’s what we’re all about at Cincy Clean Coders!

As always we’ll be starting at 6pm and ending around 8pm.  MaxTrain facilities in Mason, OH are again hosting us.  Directions can be found here.

Posted in Meetings

Finding a Groove

Jun02
2011 Leave a Comment Written by cromwellryan

As planned @cromwellryan discussed the Transformation Priority Premise to start us off.  I hope we continue seeing lightning talk topics come up, because they are so short preparation is hardly necessary and great ideas come up.  As we were all leaving someone suggested a quick overview of the AntiIf Campaign after someone remarked about it earlier.  Whoever you were, you are unofficially on the hook for July 7th :) .

The group chose the String Calculator kata and we spent a full hour pairing.  Everyone had a pair!  It was mentioned that when starting your kata it’s helpful to have an objective.  During the reviews (we saved 40 minutes) it became apparent that many were doing their first katas.  It was fantastic then that we saw ping-pong pairing to bring in a novice.  Great job Peggy!

Just about every pair reflected that they had not refactored enough.  We brought back the concept of a kata objective and how unrelenting refactoring can itself be an objective.

We had one member looking for a Scala partner, but ended up with Perl.  For all our Perl bashing, it was probably the prettiest solution.  Who would have known there was a Testing framework for Perl.  Maybe our fore-programmers knew something after all.

Posted in Meeting Reviews
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