“Thinking in F#” and “Software Craftsmanship and Agile Code Games” Slides

I’ve posted the slides from my recent presentations at Utah Code Camp 2014.  If you missed it, I’ll be presenting “Thinking in F#” at Boise Code Camp 2014 on April 5th and “Software Craftsmanship and Agile Code Games” at Mile High Agile 2014 on April 18th.

Check out these and previous sessions on my Sessions page.

Published on Ancestry.com Roots Tech blog

Posted a blog entry on the new Ancestry.com Roots Tech blog called “Games at Work?”

Here’s the opener…

Agile Games are a way for teams to learn and apply agile concepts in a fun, playful, safe environment. Play is important as it brings aliveness to our work environment that allows for creativity and our best work to flow.  Games provide a safe environment where people are more open and willing to take risks and embrace change.  The safety of games also allows us to talk about work… without necessarily talking about work.

Go check it out!

Employer Investment in Employees

Uncle Bob has a pretty clear opinion on who has the responsibility for a programmer’s practice/learning:

Professional programmers practice on their own time. It is not your employer’s job to help you keep your skills sharp for you.

Uncle Bob in The Clean Coder Chapter 6

Here Uncle Bob is talking to programmers, to employees.  What I hear is “don’t expect your employer to help you out.  If they’re not, that’s not an excuse.”

So, my question is, does that mean that employers should not provide any learning opportunities for it’s employees?

Sure, programmers are responsible for their own learning opportunities but could part of that be making sure to find an employer that provides those opportunities?  I personally take some time outside of work to sharpen my saw, but I also look for an employer that cares enough about me to invest in me.

Here is my reasoning why an employer would want to provide learning:

• Hiring is hard and expensive. If you have people that are a good fit, it’s usually easier to improve their skills than to hire someone new.
• Learning opportunities at work can inspire people to pursue outside work opportunities.  I have has several people that I work with start attending Utah Software Craftsmanship, Utah Code Camp and Coderetreats because of things that we’ve done during working hours.

What do you think?  Should employers provide opportunities for practice and learning?

CodeRandori.com and AgileCodeGames.com

I recently purchased these domains and while I have plans for them, I haven’t done anything yet.  So I decided to just have them forward here to my blog for the time being.

The plan for CodeRandori.com is to have a “one stop” resource for what a Code Randori is, how to facilitate and some example problems to use.

I’m not entirely sure about AgileCodeGames.com  I was thinking maybe to have a “Tasty Cupcakes”-like site but for coding games (like katas and randori and pairing games) but I’m not sure.

So what do you think?  Any ideas on what to build at these domains beyond what I’ve planned?

Utah Code Camp Spring 2012 Slide Decks

I had the opportunity to speak at Utah Code Camp again (my fourth code camp presenting Fall 2011 Spring 2011 Fall 2010) which was a lot of fun. Not sure if I would do three presentations again, but it was a lot of fun and I met a lot of great people.

If you attended one of my sessions, please take a minute to rate the session at SpeakerRate (not official eval… please do that too):

• Rate Code Katas: Practicing Your Craft
• Rate Randori: Group Practice 
• Rate Linq (from the inside)

Here are the slide decks. Contact me with any questions!

Randori: Group Practice

View more presentations from Mike Clement

The Randori starter project is available at https://github.com/mdclement/NumbersToLcdRandoriBase

The Code Katas session was presented as two slide decks.  One with the introductory material and the other with the guided FizzBuzz kata.

Code Katas Spring 2012

View more presentations from Mike Clement

FizzBuzz Guided Kata

View more presentations from Mike Clement

Linq (from the inside)

View more presentations from Mike Clement

The code base that I started from (tests and methods without implementation) is available at https://github.com/mdclement/Linq--from-the-inside--Presentation-Base

But I really learned from writing: Quote of the Week

Note: Might be silly to call this a “quote of the week” given that it’s been years since I posted one but… oh well.

Heard this this morning on NPR from an interview with the composer Philip Glass:

What this amount of music has done for me is taught me how to write music. Oh, I had great teachers. Boulanger was one. Another was Ravi Shankar. And I went through the Juilliard process, and that was good, too. But I really learned from writing, which is how painters learn to paint, and writers learn to write, and how even dancers learn to dance. In a way, that's true. But what was the value of being so prolific? It's how I learned my trade.

Philip Glass from Philip Glass At 75: Listening With Heart, Not Intellect

What I heard in there is "But I really learned from writing, which is how painters learn to paint, and writers learn to write, and how even coders learn to code."