Hi All,

It's 2013, and the Architecture Chat is back for the new year, after taking a little break.

We will be meeting this Thursday, 17th January at 11:30am, at Benediction Cafe, Newton.

We are collecting topics on the following google doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g2rCkS1DhnpulLlEjIsCL_ayrATC5zifLjyViz_jEYM/edit

And if you have not been to the Architecture Chat before, you can find more about it here:

http://blog.bittercoder.com/architecture-chat/

Also, don't forget that Codemania is on the 12th April, 2013 this year, with tickets on sale now.

Early-bird pricing runs out on the 13th of Feb - this year also sees the introduction of a couple of half-day workshops as well.

More goodness for all!

Catch Software, where I lead development on Enterprise Tester (among other products) are expanding the development team.

We are looking to add a full-time (Salary) software developer to work on product development.

If you are:

• Pragmatic.
• Passionate.
• Based in Auckland, New Zealand.
• Care about your craft.

And have a keen interest in:

• Shipping! Often!
• Directly influencing the design inside and out of software being delivered.
• Building extensible software.

Then we want to talk to you.

Enterprise Tester is a web application primarily written in C# and JavaScript (and a bit of F#), so those skills will be essential for you to fit well into the roll. The codebase is very JavaScript heavy so candidates with exceptional JavaScript development skills, with less experience in C# (or just a waning interest) would also be a great fit.

Beyond that the ideal addition to our team will need to be somebody who:

• Has a sense of humour.
• Proven track record.
• Does not drink too deeply of the Microsoft cool-aid.
• Interested in the challenges of building a platform (API's, plugins, server-side and client-side extension points etc.)
• Enjoys constantly learning.
• Has great spoken and written communication skills.

We are a close-knit group at Catch Software, and have a great team - so we are going to be a little picky about who we add to it, be fore-warned - but to counter this, for the developer we decide to add to the team, this is also a well remunerated position acknowledging the skills you can bring to our team ($150K+).

P.S. If I talked to you about working at catch software over the last year, and you’re looking for a change of scene in 2013, Drop me a line and we can catch up for a coffee/talk.

The official job advert can be found here:

• LinkedIn - Advert
  
• Catch website - Advert
  
• Catch website - Careers
  

And if you want to know more about what Catch Software does, check out the following links (or just talk to me).

• Catch Software - Home
  
• Enterprise Tester - Home
  

If you wish to contact me directly, you can find my contact details here.

This year New Zealand participated in the Global Day of code-retreat, with 2 groups in Auckland, and 1 group in Wellington participating last Saturday, 8th December 2012.

First off, I want to give a big shout out to all the people involved in organising the events:

• Ian (Auckland x1)
• Richard & Kalman (Auckland x2)
• Amy & Martin (Wellington)

As well as to all the local sponsors:

• Leapthought (who fully sponsored our Auckland event, thanks guys!)
• Movio
• Xero
• Mindscape

And definitely a big shout out to the global sponsor Jetbrains and the nice folks behind code retreat including of course Corey Haines, Jim Hurne, Alissa Conaty and Adi Bolboaca.

And last of all, a huge shout-out to all who came and attended - The weather on Saturday was really nice, so to have people take a whole day out of their weekend to come code, instead of spending it at the beach, is huge, and there wouldn't have been a GDCR in Auckland without your participation!

First-time Facilitator experience

My role for the day was as the code retreat Facilitator - so I spent my time leading everyone through the 5 x 45-minute sessions as different pairs worked through Conways game of life with different constraints, and while they were coding I would move around observing, poking at peoples code where they were having difficulty with the constraints, or where names, tests etc. could be improved (so I would suggest things such as "is that code very intent-revealing?" .. then breeze away before they asked how ;o) or just needed some general guidance - and of course generally trying to keep the day moving along, pulling people together for retrospectives and organizing the final circle.

For our group, there was a mix of Javascript, Java and C# mostly- though there were people giving Clojure, F# and C++ a go as well.

Overall I think they day went really well - Certainly for the first 2 sessions, some people were struggling to make much progress, but for the third session we did baby-steps, which forced people into focusing on writing a passing test + working code within 3 minutes, or rolling back their changes, which really focused some of the people used to working in a test-after fashion, driving out much smaller tests - and I think set the tone for the last 2 sessions, as people really began to focus on implementing solutions in an incremental fashion.

For the afternoon we did no return values (which really got some people twisted up, though we also had some pretty creative solutions as well!)

Last session was a choice of verb instead of noun - or - free choice of constraints from an earlier session, though most people opted to try out verb vs. noun, and lots of people found that quite challenging as well, and sparked some interesting discussions on how verb vs. noun can lead you incrementally towards a very functional solution.

Herding people is a skill

As a first-time facilitator I found one of my weaknesses was in getting people gathered for the retrospective immediately after the session... people would delete their code and stand up - but there was a good few minutes of herding cats to get everyone into a circle (entirely my own fault) as people really wanted to talk about what they had been doing with their pair, this disrupted the flow between sessions a bit, but thankfully didn't cause too much issue really, In the future I think I would try and launch into the retrospective even if there were a few stragglers, so as to keep the flow of the day.

Probably the most frustrating thing during the day was that internet access at our venue spent more time down then up, which really hampered out ability to participate in some of the "global" aspects of the global day of code retreat... That said we did manage a hookup with both Corey in the morning, and the Australian (Sydney) and New Zealand venues during the day (at least long enough to wave "hi"). The poor internet access was also wreaking havoc for those trying to download packages via maven or nuget (and yet again stresses the fact that having your environments setup before hand is a good idea!)

Personally as a first-time facilitator I found the experience really rewarding, it's not often you are given an opportunity to observe a room of almost 30 developers, all really smart and passionate people practicing their craft - and it really provides an insight (albeit brief) into how people think and approach solving problems.

I think if I took anything away from the day, it's that our community have a handle on the complex technical aspects of their craft, but what we consider the "Simple" aspects of our work (good names for both code and tests, writing tests that don't test too much or too little, and writing test-first red/green/refactor) are things we talk about more then actually practice.

I don't think we're lazy, I just think these simple things are actually pretty damn hard - and when under the pressure to deliver, "it works" and "that's an acceptable number of defects" override our drive for good names, and code that readily reveals intent for the future maintainer (normally ourselves, at a later date).

2013, year of Practice?

Looking towards 2013 I would love to see what interest we could get in:

• More code retreats.
• Legacy code retreats (I would really like to run or participate one of these, as legacy code is something dear to my heart)
• TDD like you mean it (I think we could do some half-day events around this, but I'm not sure if I'd be the best person to run it!)

There's also been some discussion around maybe kicking off some more informal things like a "Coffee and Code" club in Auckland, which sounds like a great idea, assuming we can find some "understanding" cafe's (with wifi) where we can do this, and times that work for people.

All in all, it sounds like 2013 might be the year of "Practice" for developers in the Auckland region (here's hoping!).

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What is it

The 8th of December (Saturday) is the Global Day of Code-retreat, and through the virtue of timezone magic, New Zealand will be kicking off this global event.

Global Day of Coderetreat is a world-wide event celebrating passion and software craftsmanship. Last year, over 1800 passionate software developers in 94 cities around the world spent the day practicing the craft of software development using the coderetreat format. This year, we are aiming for 200 cities! With an average of 15-20 participants per city, that's over 3000 developers!

The previous code retreat was a great experience, organized by Ian Randall (@kiwipom, of Codemania and not to mention XAML fame) and was facilitated by none other then Corey Haines himself. If you didn't make it along (or were stuck on the waiting list) - then you really did miss out on a great event!

Unfortunately Corey can't be with us on the 8th of December... so we have the second best.. no wait the third best.. no wait definitely the fourth best... well a thing, that is me, who has offered facilitate the #GDCR12 event in Auckland, and Ian Randall is again stepping up as organizer for this event.

Should I come?

Yes!

I think the evidence of how much fun and value people find in attending a code retreat is that many of the first-time attendees have signed up once again!

So if you are keen to come - definitely get in quick and sign up on the meetup event.

Depending on interest I believe a second code-retreat session may open up, but regardless, spaces are limited, as these events are generally restricted to around 20-30 people each for reasons of practicality.

If you plan to sign up, please:

• Only sign up if you definitely can attend (and withdraw ASAP if you learn you can no longer attend) as space is limited.
• Don't sign up unless you plan to be around the whole day, if you can only come for a couple of hours, be fair and give up your slot to someone else who can attend the whole day.

Costs

As Ian indicated on the meetup event, the first event was free to everyone, but ran to a cost of about $50+GST per person (covered kindly by the sponsors) - and costs are expected to be similar this time around, so if you know of anyone (such as the company you work for) who would be willing to sponsor some or all of the costs associated with the day, please contact Ian ASAP.

Venue

The first code retreat was held at the BizDojo Makerspace - which was a great venue - but unfortunately it's not available for the 8th of December, so we need a new venue for the Code Retreat to be held at.

Ideally a location close to or within the Auckland CBD would be great, with space for 30 or so people to sit at tables, and with power and internet connectivity.

If you know of a space, please contact the organizer (Ian), to discuss it further.

Attending

For those attending the event:

• Keep in mind you will be pair-programming, so you will need to bring along a laptop and a power cable.
• Ensure you have the tools/editors etc. installed before the day for languages you are comfortable in - the aim is not to learn a new language, but hone your craft - so you don't want to spend the first session setting up an environment.
• This is a pretty full-on day of coding, and can be exhausting, being well-rested is definitely a good idea

FYI - if you do want to get a feel for a different language - don't forget that there will be plenty of developers working in different languages, so you can always pair with them to get a taste (and this is a great way to see how people familiar with those languages think and work with the tools they are intimately familiar)

If you have not attended a code retreat before, you might also find it interesting to read about what a code retreat is!

coderetreat.org - about

And also watching Corey's retreat introduction on Vimeo gives you a good taste for what we will be doing:

http://vimeo.com/18955165

This will be my first time facilitating a code retreat - so things are bound to be a little rough around the edges (Corey has had years to master the code retreat format, and is also crazy smart) - but I'm confident everyone will have a great experience.

(FYI - For those interested in how the day will unfold, we will be following the structure outlined here - but this will all be covered during the start of the code retreat session, so don't feel you have to swat up on what we will be doing)

coderetreat.org - structure of a code retreat

See you there!

Can't wait to see everyone there, and have some fun honing our craft together.