Ideas for March or April

[Clare Sudbery]

Hey all

Great to see some of you last night!

I promised Mark I'd have a think about options I could present for March or April. I've thought of two possibilities - one for March, cos it requires zero laptops or projectors (cos we'll be meeting in a room in Briton's Protection (pub) which might not have the stuff we're used to in our fancy offices), and one for April cos it needs laptops...

1. Let's have a heated debate! A goldfish bowl or roundtable discussion on the topic, "Are LLMs friend or foe for software devs and XP?"

2. Cyber-dojo fun. We'll pick a TDD kata - any kata (as long as it's available on cyber-dojo, but that list is LONG - see https://cyber-dojo.org/creator/choose_problem) - and do it in pairs on cyber-dojo. As well as just having fun doing a kata, this will also be a chance to showcase the things you can do with cyber-dojo.org. 

I'm not proposing I do both March and April, simply cos I think that might lead to a Clare overdose. But I could do March OR April, then save the other option for a future date.

Let me know what y'all think!

Cheers
Clare.

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@ClareSudbery

Podcast host: Making Tech Better 

Public speaking and trainings: Events

Writer: Articles

[Clare Sudbery]

I just had another idea for the pub: "Adventures in XP". This is a postit-based activity that I just invented which will tease out all our individual stories of using XP in practice over the years - where, when, how, etc. One of the outputs will be a Manchester XP Family Tree, which could be fun.

[Rob Whittaker]

These are all brilliant. The LLM debate feels especially timely. There's enough disagreement to make it a proper discussion rather than a passive chat.

Adventures in XP is a great shout too. A Manchester XP Family Tree would be something worth pinning to the wall.

Happy with any of them. If pushed, I'd vote for the March debate and save the others for later.

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[The Mr Tortoise]

Maybe I'm just a grumpy asshole

I'm am so tired of talking about ai

But I am one human - mostly

Would be far more interested in someone who has a novel workflow that isn't simply a restatement of dev using an llm

What are the options, why is something controversial? Or unexpected 

What seemingly obvious thing is counter intuitive?

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[Mark Kirschstein]

I've somewhat intentionally steered away from AI topics - mostly because they're bloody everywhere right now, but also because I've felt like the group has been about underlying principles more than specific technology.

However, I concede that it may be time to yield on that point, accept that this particular genie is well and truly out of the bottle and question whether or not it does impact the underlying principles we've worked by. 

So, a quick straw poll with two questions - 

1) Would people prefer a debate or a more open ended discussion?

2) What questions do you think provoke the more interesting conversation?

[Neil Vass]

Hey I found why our meeting room was called Sykes!

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/remarkable-dr-eleanor-dies-at-101-1015581

Since I'm not a regular attendee you should give my opinions less weight, but:

- I've heard far too much about AI and tend to avoid it, will look again once the hype dies down.

- cyber-dojo sounds very fun, I've never used it.

- the Mob Programming RPG is a fun activity, have you tried it? https://github.com/willemlarsen/mobprogrammingrpg

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[Rob Whittaker]

I've been thinking about this more. The AI debate would be a good one. Something that leans into the XP principles themselves draws me in.

We spend a lot of time on programming practices (pairing, TDD), but what about the rest? The Planning Game, for instance. How many of us actually run it? What does estimation look like on our teams now versus ten years ago?

It could be a session where we pick an underused XP practice, and we workshop it. Let's have an honest conversation about whether we still do it and why.

Happy with whatever the group decides, but I wanted to throw that in before the vote closes.

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