Steven Milne and I ran the first CodeRetreat in Aberdeen on 21 April and a little under twenty people turned up on the day. Adrian Mowat from EdgeCaseUK facilitated the event for us and kept everythign moving along smoothly.
Adrian ran the traditional CodeRetreat format and had everyone coding in pairs to develop Conways’ Game of Life in 40 minute blocks using test driven development (TDD) followed by a short retrospective and then a switching of partners. After the first two sessions everyone had laptops all sorted for running TDD and they focused clearly on coding tests and having fun.
Thanks to sponsorship from Codify, Fifth Ring, the Aberdeen Software Factory at the University of Aberdeen, and EdgeCaseUK we had food from ItsyWorld, which was wonderful as always.
By the end of the day after six sessions of pairing one pair had the game running in Javascript and everyone had a much better understanding of the value TDD brings to coding sessions. Thanks to all who came along, or sponsored us on the day.
In case you’re wondering. Don’t. We will run another CodeRetreat later in the year.
billythekid
April 26, 2012sounds like it was a lot of fun, can’t wait for the next one. I hope I’m actually able to attend it!
Using Deliberate Practice in the Classroom – Bruce Scharlau
December 3, 2018[…] trying to build on the learning experience of a code retreat, which we’ve organised in the past, as well as what comes out of coding katas too, and the discussions I’ve had with developers […]