Live Coding @ RailsCamp 7?

[Chris]

Hey guys,

I passed this idea by a couple of people before we all packed up and
left today, and I wanted to throw it to the greater group to get some
more discussion.

This RC was my first, and it was awesome. The thing that impressed me
the most were the live coding sessions (thanks to Bo, Perryn, Tim, Pat
and the other people whose names I'm terribly sorry that I can't
recall). Sure the rooms got loud at times, and the sessions went for a
looong time, but I think there wasn't a single person in any of those
sessions that wasn't involved in the coding taking place up on the big
screen. By the end of them, I think everybody had taken away a lot
from them, and that's what it's all about.

I'd like to see that again at the next RailsCamp.

It'd be cool if the venue for the next RC had a couple of rooms akin
to a small lecture theatre where a projector could be set up in each
one. As people started hacking on projects, and the projects started
collecting a bit of an interest or following, they might take their
laptop(s) to one of the rooms and start live coding.

For one thing, it'd be cool to see a project come to life on a big
screen. For another, it offers people who want to help out with
something a tangible place they can gravitate toward and hang out in
and help anyone who starts live coding. Also, some interesting context-
specific discussions are bound to be sparked by "passionate"
individuals as 'objectionable' code starts appearing on screens...

What do you guys think? If we had three rooms, each with a dedicated
projector, a small table for a group of guys to hack away on a big
screen, and a few rows of seats behind them all, I think it would make
for some epic learning and hacking.

[James Sadler]

Chris,

I'm with you on that.

One of my biggest buzzes came from that hacking session on Gistory.
I'd love to see more of that - it's a very inspiring way to learn.
Yes, it did get rowdy, but it was great nonetheless.

We may need to practice some extra discipline to keep the session
productive, but in all fairness that coding session was an impromptu
deal after much beer drinking.

Thanks to everyone for making it happen.

James.

2009/11/23 Chris <ch...@chrisdarroch.com>:

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James

[Tim Lucas]

On 23/11/2009, at 8:36 PM, James Sadler <fresh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> One of my biggest buzzes came from that hacking session on Gistory.
> I'd love to see more of that - it's a very inspiring way to learn.
> Yes, it did get rowdy, but it was great nonetheless.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll make a concerted effort to make it
happen again next time, maybe with a bit more prep :)

-- tim

[Tim Lucas]

On 23/11/2009, at 5:24 PM, Chris <ch...@chrisdarroch.com> wrote:

> What do you guys think? If we had three rooms, each with a dedicated
> projector, a small table for a group of guys to hack away on a big
> screen, and a few rows of seats behind them all, I think it would make
> for some epic learning and hacking.

Specific configuration aside, I like it. Screen sharing to a projector
may also be a good idea? Not sure if live creating will work as well
as live refactoring, but no reason we can't give it a shot.

-- tim

[David Lee]

How about a session where everyone in the room is working on a codebase at the same time, using a collaborative text editor

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor ) like subthaedit (http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/)?

It'd probably be like trying to herd a bunch of cats on rollerskates hopped up on goofballs, but it sounds like a cool thing to try.

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cheers,
David Lee

[Andrew Grimm]

"By combining the ease of Bonjour" (from
http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ )

*screams*

Apart from that, it might be worth trying it at a city-based hack session first.

Andrew

[Ryan Bigg]

Having 40 people try to hack together the same app at the same time using 1 editor sounds like a whole lot of opinions and a whole lot of ego bruising. Perhaps get a group no bigger than 5 together with 1 person who knows what they're doing and can give the other 4 time to ask their questions and personal help.

[Dylan Fogarty-MacDonald]

Having 40 people try to hack together the same app at the same time using 1 editor sounds like a whole lot of opinions and a whole lot of ego bruising. Perhaps get a group no bigger than 5 together with 1 person who knows what they're doing and can give the other 4 time to ask their questions and personal help.

Although sessions like this held with quite a few people can get slightly out of hand at times, I think there's value and benefit from a more organic and less structured approach. Who cares about egos anyway? They can handle a little bruising -- it's a good thing :)

Dylan

2009/11/25 Ryan Bigg <radarl...@gmail.com>

Having 40 people try to hack together the same app at the same time using 1 editor sounds like a whole lot of opinions and a whole lot of ego bruising. Perhaps get a group no bigger than 5 together with 1 person who knows what they're doing and can give the other 4 time to ask their questions and personal help.

--

[David Lee]

here's an idea which requires a little bit of thought put into it before arrival: divide a suitable project into ~ 5 functional components or areas with reasonably well-defined interfaces, and set up a team for each of these areas to sit together and hack on each bit. When it comes to integrating their work, they can talk to each other, but having a little api spec up front would make it a lot easier.

this seems to be the kind of thing i've seen advocated by XP types for large teams: keep team sizes artificially small, and compose big projects out of smaller ones.

--
cheers,
David Lee

[Chris Herring]

If the specifics of that could be sorted it sounds like a great idea.

[Ben Hoskings]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 4:01 PM, David Lee <deathtoal...@gmail.com> wrote:

here's an idea which requires a little bit of thought put into it before arrival: divide a suitable project into ~ 5 functional components or areas with reasonably well-defined interfaces, and set up a team for each of these areas to sit together and hack on each bit. When it comes to integrating their work, they can talk to each other, but having a little api spec up front would make it a lot easier.

this seems to be the kind of thing i've seen advocated by XP types for large teams: keep team sizes artificially small, and compose big projects out of smaller ones.

I think this could work really well. I think the critical bit is to cap the team size, though—I'd say an max of 6 people, preferably 4 or 5.

Another thing to consider—maybe one person in each team should be the "leader"—the person who makes the call when agreement on some aspect of the project can't be reached after a while.

Either way, sounds interesting, looking forward to experimenting with this.

- ben_h

[Daniel Neighman]

We could use this small teams approach to finnaly make a decent cms out of pancake stacks ;) ;)

[Andrew Grimm]

Do you reckon it'll work if people are free to come and go as they please?

Andrew

[Daryl Manning]

Besides that idea, I know someone in the end of camp showcase was showing off a little app to allow people to propose and gather forces for specific projects in front of railscamps (and it was dman good looking too). Thought that was a great idea I'd like to see before the next Railscamp.

Anyone know if that code got pushed to github actually ? Would love to see that used for a hack day sometime in the near future as well.

ciao !
Daryl.

[Brenton Fletcher]

Hey,

Yeah, I've added the refactoring branches and merged them into master on my repo on github: http://github.com/bloopletech/gistory

I've also been refactoring the JavaScript side of things something furious, so it should actually make some sense now ;)

-Brenton Fletcher