Friday, January 14, 2011

Training Day 5

Recap of Thursday last session: TDD, refactoring, hot keys, ping pong, unit test, JUnit, hamcrest, statics, methods which are there only so you can test them (are bad)

For those of us who are completely done with the curriculum, we can help with the setup for the project. Stuff like setting up Go, the repository, etc.

I learned that UK Macs have a slightly different key layout- just enough to screw up my muscle memory.

It is very important that we have a deep understanding of what null pointers are and are not, because interpreting error messages is a large percentage of what one does. 

Session on retrospectives:
We talked about the "safety check" exercise, where everyone puts a number from 1-5 (5 is comfortable, 1 is on the verge of setting the place on fire?) on a postit, crumples it, and someone comes around with a bag and collects them anonymously. Uncrumple them and put them on the board and see what the group is feeling..

Sometimes the safety exercise is followed by an anonymous round of "what would make you feel more safe?" (Sometimes the answer is for the senior architect to leave the room... or for the client to leave... etc and sometimes the recommendations are followed if the facilitator judges that that would be a good idea)

Make sure that your retrospection makes action items! Also that there are specific individuals' names on them- ownership is essential. Group ownership does not work. 

One of our number has a rather bad toothache, unfortunately. Current resolution is painkillers and soon a dentist. 

Future TWUers: consider making an excel spreadsheep of weekend trips, with columns for cost, organizer, activities, and dates.

We had an open space that included discussing several TED talks and their value as presentations.