Code Katas: Practicing Your Craft
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One of the key values as part of the Software Craftsmanship movement is to be "skill-centric" and as part of that, practicing our skills as software developers is key! The Code Kata format is a coding exercise that is repeated and perfected. It provides one of many ways to practice the craft of software development. We'll discuss the Code Kata format, introduce a few katas and discuss some other practice formats.
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Code Katas: Practicing Your Craft
- 1. Code Katas Practicing Your Craft Mike Clement @mdclement mike@softwareontheside.com http://blog.softwareontheside.com Utah Code Camp Fall 2011
- 2. “Often the true value of a thing isn’t the thing itself, but instead is the activity that created it.” -Dave Thomas
- 3. Chad Fowler on Practice “As a musician, I might spend a significant portion of my practice schedule playing things that nobody would want to listen to…. I would certainly never record them and release them on a CD. I wouldn’t even bore anyone with these sounds unless they either lived in my house and had no choice or were being paid to listen to them and offer suggestions for improvement. This is an example of “work” in which the action is far more valuable than the direct output.” http://chadfowler.com/2003/03/25/valueless-software
- 5. But I “Practice” On the Job! The Lie
- 6. Dave Thomas on Practice “It’s like taking a group of fit kids and telling them that they have four quarters to beat the Redskins (hey, we manage by objectives, right?). In software we do our practicing on the job, and that’s why we make mistakes on the job. We need to find ways of splitting the practice from the profession. We need practice sessions.” http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html
- 7. Dave Thomas’s Keys to Practice Pressure Off Learn how to play with code http://www.codekata.com/2007/01/code_katahow_it.html Fundamentally incompatible with “on the job”!
- 8. Ceramics Quantity or Quality?
- 9. Shu Ha Ri 守 Shu – House of Laws; to abide by, to defend 破 Ha – Stone; to break 離 Ri – Bird; to leave, to depart Similar to Dryfus model Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient, Expert Similar to Apprentice model Apprentice, Craftsman, Master
- 10. The rush past 守 (Shu) I’m so Smart
- 11. Code Katas are Shu Slow down!
- 13. Katas aren’t the one true practice? Other forms of practice
- 14. Randori Pair Programming Pair changes with mechanism (Time box, Ping Pong) Start from scratch Use TDD Everyone should be following Pair should be explaining Audience gives suggestions only with when Green Example at http://vimeo.com/2499540 http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RandoriKata
- 15. Koans Koans are questions without absolute answers which are used to break down assumptions and reveal underlying truths http://rubykoans.com/
- 16. Code Retreat Problem: Conway's Game of Life Length of Session: 45 minutes Duration: 8.30am to 5 or 6pm Pair-programming is necessary, as the knowledge transfer contained in that activity is essential to the practice Prefer using Test-Driven Development (TDD) After each session, pairs should be swapped After each session, code must be deleted, not put in a branch, not stashed, just deleted with no trace left http://coderetreat.com/facilitation.html
- 17. Let’s Try it Out Guided or Prepared Kata
- 18. “Often the true value of a thing isn’t the thing itself, but instead is the activity that created it.” -Dave Thomas
- 19. Kata Lists http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataCatalogue http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html http://stackoverflow.com/questions/44533/your-favorite-code-kata http://www.katacasts.com/ http://katas.softwarecraftsmanship.org/
- 20. My Contact Info @mdclement mike@softwareontheside.com http://blog.softwareontheside.com Utah Software Craftsmanship Group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ut-software-craftsmanship @utahsc
Editor's Notes
- Verbs vs. NounsRequirements“Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable” – Dwight D. Eisenhowerthe value is the process that everyone goes through in order to produce the document: the understanding gained, the relationships forged, the negotiations, the compromises, and all the other little interactions which share information.QualityPlan, measure, build a quality product!Quality is PART OF THE PROCESS. Quality is in the spirit of the smallest of our daily activities.
- Read quote
- Who plays a musical instrument? Practice time vs. performance time?ScalesArpeggiosExtended tones (wind instruments)Various technical patternsLast bars of Franz Liszt's Transcendental Étude No. 2: one of the most difficult of Liszt's études, this is a study in passages for alternating and overlapping hands.Sports is the same way, how much time is spent practicing versus performing?
- Clearly each of you is here at Code Camp on a Saturday because you KNOW that you can’t get everything you need for your profession, to be a master of your craft by practicing “on the job”.
- Provide a temporal oasis where it’s OK not to worry about some approaching deadline.Learn how to play with code: how to make mistakes, how to improvise, how to reflect, and how to measure. This is hard: we’re trained to try to do things right rather than improvise.These “keys” are fundamentally incompatible with “on the job” learning.One the job has deadlines and restrictions. It’s very visible to other people so mistakes are less tolerated.Sure there is a component to this. We can learn on the job. “Live” experience is important. For example with public speaking, you can practice and practice, but actually presenting is different. Practicing helps, but it doesn’t replace real experience.SportsMusicMilitary combatCooking for your in-laws
- The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.htmlArt & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking [Paperback]David Bayles (Author), Ted Orland (Author)We learn by DOING!I would argue that we can’t do quantity on the job. We have to get the volume of repetitions elsewhere.
- Concept introduced to software by Alistair CockburnShu - the technical foundation of the artSingle instructorCopy techniques without modificationit is the instructor that decides when the student moves on from Shu to Ha, not the studentIt’s up to the student to follow the instructor’s teaching as an empty vessel to be filled upHareflect on the meaning and purpose of everything that s/he has learned and thus come to a deeper understanding of the artRimust think originally and develop from background knowledge original thoughts about the art and test them against the reality of his or her background knowledge and conclusions as well as the demands of everyday lifethe art truly becomes the practitioner’s own and to some extent his or her own creationInvent own techniques
- Everyone is at different levels with different skills that they are developing, but nobody is master of all skills.We often jump right into critiquing a method or idea instead of attempting it “as is” first. We think that we’re so smart that we can skip past the “beginner” stuff and get right into it.Programmers are especially susceptible to this as we have sizable egos generally.Seek first to understand.
- Slow down!Practice the feel and to internalize the movesBuilding muscle memoryChange your intuitionTrain your eyes and fingers to recognize and respond to patternsValue in repetition even if you don’t agree.You may not like what the kata is teaching you, but that is learning too.
- Japanese word describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practiced either solo or in pairs.A kata is a coding exercise that performed repeatedly and perfected.Framework for focused practiceTDD/Unit TestsPerformanceStructureMemory UseTool use (IDE, text editor)Practice comes to an end; with a real problem… not so muchPath is laid out for you so there is a definite end
- Group is given a problem.Time box – you have x amount of time per pairPing Pong – one person writes a test, next codes to green and writes next test, next codes to green and writes test…
- Anybody attended one of these?Working to have one in Utah.
- As we learned earlier, the best way to learn is by experimenting and repeating so that’s what we’re going to do
- Remember that the problem that we solved today is not really that important. It’s not important that we have a piece of code to score a bowling game. It is important that we go through the exercise and take from it what we can.