Workshop on 25th June - aftermath

[paulcc]

Hi

The workshop went pretty well, I think. Jamie Curle summarised it nicely: "It was a pleasant mixture of 'ah-ha', 'mmm' & 'agghhh'". That's kind of what I aimed for.

A projector or whiteboard would have been useful, though not too amenable in the (free) venue. I would have liked to do more hands-on exercises, but time was a bit limited too. 

I'll write some more later, but if you have comments or requests, please add them.

Paul

[William Mortada]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for organising this workshop.  I found it very useful.

William

[Jamie Curle]

Hi Paul & William, 

It was nice to meet you both :) 

Thanks also to Paul for sorting out the workshop.

I think by doing it on paper it was little more tactile, but I can understand the need for a projector, many sheets of giant paper, a whiteboard or maybe a good old fashioned blackboard and chalk to make it easier to see some of the examples. I think something like this may have to form part of my kit - http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/31967859/Asus-P1-Portable-LED-Projector/Product.html?_%24ja=tsid:11518%7Ccat:31967859%7Cprd:31967859

For me the workshop was a big help because it highlighted the things that I was doing correctly, incorrectly and paved the way forward.  Visualising the tree's was a first and connecting that with what I know about operational precedence (I suspect) will help the next time I'm authoring a mind bending regex.

I agree with you about doing more exercises, perhaps it would have been good to ask everyone to bring an example of regex based code that (for them) is where the edges of understanding start giving way to the abyss of unknown. For me that would have been something like taking a blog post and matching blocks of code tags and finding the most efficient way to extract the tags and for each of the tags extract the value of the lang attribute and the contents of the bits in between the tags. 

I have code that does this, but it would have been a great way for us all to to get exposure to other languages, help and learn from each other. It may have also reduced the amount of prep in dealing with exercises.

Getting away from the subject matter and going meta about the workshop workshop side of things it's certainly got me thinking along the lines of defining some very specific topics that could fit into a two hour slot (ie - observer pattern - the power of django's signals and you receivers) vs those that can't (ie - learn Django)

Time for me to get doing on my own workshop I think.

So yes, thanks again nice to meet you both :)

Cheers, 

Jamie.