Ruby Kata

[Sean Hussey]

Hi everyone,

At what I think was the October meeting, I mentioned the possibility of starting up a group of people who'd just like to get together and practice their Ruby chops.  Several people seemed interested.  Is this still the case?

The whole thing can be very informal.  People can meet/pair up somewhere (office?  coffee shop?) and sit down to practice their skills.  There need not be a goal in terms of producing something useful as long as everyone gets something out of it.

Some starting points:

 * PragDave's list of Code Kata - http://codekata.pragprog.com/

 * RubyQuiz - http://www.rubyquiz.com/

 * Stuck on something?  Want to improve something you've written?  Bring it along.  Like an in-person  http://www.refactormycode.com/ .  Something like Chris Maxwell had going a few meetings ago--he had working code but wanted advice on how to improve it.  Why wait for the monthly meeting?

What it boils down to is that there are some great mentors and would-be mentors in this group, and there are also people who'd like to be mentored.  In fact, some of you (myself included) might find yourself in both categories.

If anybody is still interested, I'd love to talk about how people think we should structure this (if at all) and get the ball rolling.  I'm planning on being at the meeting on Tuesday, so perhaps that can be a good starting point.

Sean

[Tom Dyer]

Great idea Sean. Id be interested.

Just wondering what you're thoughts on how this would be different
from the hackfest that Dan Croak and others have been doing?

Guess my reading of Code Kata, http://codekata.pragprog.com/, would be
very small exercises on perhaps throw away code. Focus would be more
on sharpening one's Ruby skills instead of creating or contributing to
a project? Mostly a difference of size or scale of the
project/exercise.

thanks,
tom

[Dan Grover]

Yeah, this looks like fun. I hadn't heard of Code Kata before. I'd be
up for it.

Dan Grover

[michae...@prospectmarkets.com]

I presume that "kata" refers to form exercises commonly practiced in martial arts for mastery of basic skills?

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Grover <d...@dangrover.com>

Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:11:00
To:boston-r...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Ruby Kata

[David J Berube]

Yes.

The person who does the worst at the kata gets beat up by the winners.

;)

Take it easy,

David Berube
Berube Consulting
djbe...@berubeconsulting.com
(603)-485-9622
http://www.berubeconsulting.com/

[michae...@prospectmarkets.com]

Well, I was never any good at katas when I studied martial arts, so that very well could be me.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

-----Original Message-----

From: David J Berube <djbe...@berubeconsulting.com>

Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:35:39

[Sean Hussey]

Now that's motivation!  :)

Yes, I didn't want to step on the fantastic Hackfests Dan is heading up, so I wanted to make the distinction that, like you said, this is for practice, producing only (mostly?) throwaway code.

For instance, maybe there's someone who's great with OO design, but not TDD.  Someone good with TDD wanting to brush up on their OO might pair up with them.  If there were a large group of people, maybe there could be several groups/pairs that could then compare solutions after a set time limit.

So, some suggestions would be to take a small task or set of tasks, time box them, and get down to it.  Discussions on theory, other languages, etc should be put into the "parking lot" list as things to be talked about later in the parking lot.  The practice, trying, and failing should be the focus, which will in turns spawn hours and hours of other discussions.  :)

Of course, whatever works for everyone is what should be done.  I'm just throwing some thoughts out there.

Sean

[Amy Newell]

Can I suggest lunchtime ruby kata instead of evening meetings? I don't know about everyone else, but I find evening meetings to be pretty difficult to get to. Our kids require pretty much all hands on deck during the witching hours 5 - 9 pm, and evening meetings screw up both dinnertime and bedtimes.

Or maybe sometimes have lunch meetings and sometimes evening? I'd love to come, but can't really make the time for another evening event right now, they're killers. 

it would be interesting to see if lunchtime events make it easier for others to show up sometimes too. 

see you all at ruby group this evening!

Amy Newell

amy.n...@gmail.com

[Sean Hussey]

Great idea!  That's the beauty of this--you can do it during a coffee break if you want.

I think the group should facilitate people meeting up and figuring out who'd like to work on what, but the actual time spent can be whenever you agree to do so.  If there happens to be a big group that wants to meet at night, great.  If there are some people local to each other for lunch, fantastic.  If you like doing it over Skype with SubEthaEdit, go for it.

I've got a toddler, too, so I know exactly what you mean about evening meetings.  The point of this is to practice.  We all know what times are best for us, so let's work with that.

Sean

[Sean Hussey]

If anybody's at the meeting and reading this, please pass it on.

Something came up today that kept me from attending.  My apologies to all who wanted to talk about this idea, but I hope people got together to chat just the same.  Perhaps we can continue the discussion on the list?

I hope the meeting was great!

Sean

[Dan Croak]

Hey all,

I just saw this thread now. My guess is that many Boston Rubyists are
interested in this and that the biggest obstacle is scheduling time.

At the smallest hackfest we've had yet (right after the holidays), we
messed with Merb. Perhaps at the next hackfest, we can return to Merb
to build a simple scheduler for Ruby Kata:

* Pick a time
* Pick a place
* Pick your pair
* Pick your kata

Each Rubyist in the system keeps two lists:

* Stuff where you're the mentor
* Stuff where you're the protege

Does that sound worthwhile?

Best,
Dan

[Josh]

Sounds worthwhile, and small enough unit of work, to be a good
candidate for a hackfest.

I'd suggest sticking with activerecord and erb for the project. We got
a little crazy at the hackfest Dan mentioned, and tried to use merb,
datamapper, and haml, but it ended up being a little too much new
stuff at once for the amount of time we had.

- Josh

[Sean Hussey]

I second that.  Great idea, Dan!

[Jason Morrison]

Sounds great to me, too!  Are we meeting up tomorrow for this?

Jason

--
Jason Morrison
jason.p....@gmail.com
http://jayunit.net
(585) 216-5657

[Sean Hussey]

The Hackfest is next week, but I think we should certainly chat a bit about it tomorrow.