Krakow Global Day of CodeRetreat
THE BACKGROUND
Programmers savour the challenges coding brings. Endless strings of letters interlaced with numbers surely made a young computer wonk feel like the Matrix’s Morpheus more than once. This may lead to exponential ego overgrowth and grass starting to grow where one’s trodden.
Or, how it happens in most cases, the individual starts the never-ending quest for knowledge, usually crowned with ‘guru’ status among developers. Such was the case with Corey Haines, who came up with the idea of CodeRetreat workshops in 2009. As he put it:
"The idea was to develop a repeatable, day-long event that was focused on practicing the fundamentals of software development:"
Over the course of the events, a plan emerged: Corey (or other facilitator, as the organisers came to be known) heralded a CodeRetreat event, programmers gathered, the coordinators put them in a room and asked to code in random pairs on a given subject within a fixed set of rules and short time limit. After the last code lines had been written, programmers’ work was immediately wiped clean and they discussed what they have just created. The course of mingling-writing-deleting-discussing was dubbed a session.
The method proved to be so effective that other coders took heed and coderetreats mushroomed all over the world. Lunar Logic Polska decided to step in and sponsored Corey Haines’s flight and stay in April 2011 in Kraków to facilitate the first CodeRetreat here. People from Software Craftmanship Kraków took care of everything and the gallery from the Spring CR is available on their webpage.
After the event it was obvious that there is a need for such a gathering to take place more often, thus once more LLP funded and organised CodeRetreat, this time as a part of it's global dimension, dispatching Lunar’s own Andrzej, Konrad and Adam to prepare the workshops on 3rd December 2011. The CR event was so anticipated that the available "tickets” were given out in a matter of hours and about 40 people showed up.
THE EVENT
The 3rd fell on a Saturday and the first coders started flocking in at around 8 AM, snatching rockpool-blue CodeRetreat t-shirts sponsored by LLP and designed by our own Olga. The organisers greeted the participants at around 9 AM, briefly described the rules of CR and the problem they were to deal with - the Game of Life and wished them good luck.
Adam and Andrzej, along with Sebastian Bełczyk, the third facilitator, were hovering between the programmers always ready to give helpful advice, point out an overlooked problem or simply cheer up coders who came to a halt. Three 45-minute sessions passed, each focusing on different approach to the Game of Life: the 1st was just an introduction to the problem, during the second one facilitators suggested throwing the mouse away and at the third session programmers were urged to concentrate on the 4 rules of simple design. Each session ended with a coffee break, pair swap and a short discussion afterwards; the CodeRetreat morning concluded with a lunch from an Indian restaurant.
After the meal coders cooperated in another three sessions. The fourth was about testing - Adam, Andrzej and Sebastian encouraged people to "step up the testing ladder”, i.e. no tests - tests after - tests before - true tdd. After the fourth attempt to write the Game of Life there were two calls from other CodeRetreats: Łódź and New York. As for the fifth and five session, Adam described them shortly:
"In the fifth session we asked people to try programming either without loops or without conditionals. We also proposed the silent pairing exercise, which only a couple of people tried. In the last session we suggested "write the worst code you can" exercise."
After obliterating the last bits of code, the facilitators thanked the participants for a whole day of fun and invited them for a celebration which lasted up until midnight.
CONCLUSION
Global Day of CodeRetreat 2011 took place in more than 90 cities all over the globe. Hundreds of programmers met, churning out thousands lines of code and exchanging ideas, experience and different views on how programming should be done. LLP is proud to be a part of the GDCR 2011 success and hopes the event will be organised again next year. See you then!