Coding In Public
or If You’re Gonna’ Suck, Do It
With Gusto!
Alan Stevens

WHO IS ALAN STEVENS?
• Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
• ASP Insider
• Occasional Blogger
http://netcave.org
• An Enthusiast NOT an expert!

June 26th – 27th 2009
• Knoxville, TN
• Regional Speakers / Open Spaces
• .NET, Java, Ruby, Erlang, more
• Call for speakers – March 31
– 3 & 6 hour sessions on Friday
– 1 hour sessions on Saturday
• http://CodeStock.org
• http://twitter.com/CodeStock

DevLink
August 13-15, 2009 Nashville, TN
www.devlink.net

“I never stopped trying to become
qualified for the job.”
Darwin Smith,
CEO of Kimberly Clark

Novice
• Rigid adherence to taught rules or plans
• Little situational perception
• No discretionary judgment

Advanced Beginner
• Guidelines for action based on attributes or
aspects
• Situational perception is still limited
• All attributes and aspects are treated
separately and given equal importance

Competent
• Sees action at least partially in terms of
longer-term goals
• Conscious, deliberate planning
• Standardized and routinized procedures
• Plan guides performance as situation evolves

Proficient
• Sees situation holistically rather than in terms
of aspects
• Sees what is most important in a situation
• Perceives deviations from the normal pattern
• Uses maxims, whose meanings vary according
to the situation, for guidance
• Situational factors guide performance as
situation evolves

Expert
• No longer relies on rules, guidelines, or
maxims
• Intuitive grasp of situations based on deep
tacit understanding
• Intuitive recognition of appropriate decision
or action
• Analytic approaches used only in novel
situations or when problems occur

Where We Stand
Expert
Proficient
Competent
Advanced Beginner
Novice
Source: Hackos & Stevens, 1997 via the Pragmatic Programmers

\"The vast majority of all users remain advanced
beginners, performing the tasks they need and
learning new tasks as the need arises, but
never acquiring a more broad-
based, conceptual understanding of the task
environment\"
Hackos & Stevens, 1997, p. 36

You can write COBOL in any language.

The Mastery Curve

The Dabbler

The Obsessive

The “Hacker”

.

Zones of Comfort
Comfort Zone
Learning Zone
Panic Zone

Comfort Zone
People stay here
Minds often closed to learning
Very little change

Learning Zone
Lots of Uncertainty
Feels uncomfortable
and challenging
Lots of learning opportunities

Panic Zone
People close up
They freeze
They don’t learn
Very little focus on change and improvement –
it’s all about survival

What is expertise?
• Performance consistently superior to
peers
• Produces concrete results
• Can be replicated

Recipe For Greatness
1.Intensive practice
2.Devoted teachers
3.Enthusiastic support

Deliberate
practice
focuses on
tasks beyond
your current
level of
competence
and comfort.

It is only by working at what you can’t
do that you become an expert

Be honest about areas for
improvement

Flow requires challenge or boredom
results.

How can we encourage greatness
(or at least improvement)?
• Be supportive of efforts to improve
– Allow one another to suck (with gusto!)
• Be a mentor
• Catalog simulations and case studies

Be willing to be a mentor

Remember the
Kobayashi Maru

Simulations and
Case Studies
• Code Kata
• Code Dojo
• Bitslingers
• “Code Sparring”

Greatness is not a function of circumstances.
Greatness, as it turns out, is largely a matter
of conscious choice.
Jim Collins in Good to Great

Papers & Articles
• Expertise and Skilled Performance
• The Making of an Expert
• What It Takes to be Great

.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 56

Thanks For Listening!
Email/IM: alanstevens@gmail.com
Blog: http://netcave.org
Twitter: @alanstevens