Refactoring Dojo

[Sebastian Nozzi]

Hello organisers,

at our Vienna user-group I plan to hold a Scala refactoring-dojo at some point towards en of January.

The kata in question will be Conway's game of life (I want to lure fellow Scala developers to coding-dojos / code-retreats).

At some point I will publish the code in our github repo, but not yet (too soon for that, don't want to spoil the surprise to our community members).

I wanted to share this with you and get some feedback. For example:

• Do you think it's too much / too difficult to refactor in 1:30 or 2:00 hours?
• Do you think it would be better to work in pairs or alone?

Feel free to use this material in your Scala user-groups as well. Giving credit is appreciated!

Best,

Sebastian

[Sebastian Nozzi]

I meant "end of January".

[Joost Heijkoop]

Hey!

I think pairing is always the best solution. In this way you can pair different skill levels.
Also pairing is better for brainstorming about possible solutions.

I don't know about the time. How large is the proposed refactoring? Doing a part is doable, a whole system is probably to much.

Cheers,

Joost

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[Sebastian Nozzi]

Hi Joost,

thanks for the feedback. Yes, I tried pairing with different skills levels. I think it worked fine. But I would like to avoid the expert having the keyboard the whole time.

Regarding the size of the refactoring, take a look at my first e-mail. I attached the project there. Maybe it's too long to complete...

I was planning to do maybe 45 minutes, a small stand-up talk to see if everything is fine, a 5 minute break, another 45 minutes, another break, and then 30 minutes (could be 20) of showing / talking about approaches and solutions. But this is not set in stone...

Cheers,

Seb.

[Andy (London Scala UG)]

Hi Sebastian

I agree with the pairing, in-fact we actually go for 3-person groups (guess thats not strictly pairing), makes people talk more. 

We also try to break people up who know each other. (ie if you need 4 groups, just work clockwise around the room saying you're in group 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2 etc), also help in making the groups of average ability.

I have no idea on the time part, just know we always get much less done that we expect.

 

Having a show/talk at the end is really good, its very interesting to see how different teams get different solutions.

 

Andy

[Sebastian Nozzi]

Hi Andy,

thanks for the feedback. And very good idea about splitting them that way. I might try it. But I also want to pair experts with beginners. So I might try a combination of both methods ;-)

Cheers,

Seb.