Global Code Retreat Day in Calgary - November 18th

Event Information

Code retreat is a day long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take part in focused practice, away from the pressure of "getting things done", the code retreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object-oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time. Furthermore, it's a good way to share experience with different developers by pair programming on the problem.

Structure of a code retreat:

The code retreat days consists 4-5 sessions. Each sessions' learnings built upon previous sessions.Here's the rough outline for the day :

http://coderetreat.org/pages/facilitating/structure-of-a-coderetreat/

I have collected a list of katas we could practice together, or you could bring your own list of katas you would like to practice/share with other developers

String Calculator - good for the TDD newbie, since it really leads you by the hand

Tennis - good for practicing refactoring

Gilded Rose - good for practicing writing really good tests (and refactoring)

Tyre Pressure - good for understanding SOLID principles

Last year, I was asked if I could provide example katas so it can help people get started and look into in case they're interested. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51Z0kRZnNoFoSiXtwEe8Af6_ImP8pllk

Starting code base:

https://github.com/tonytvo/coderetreat

Bio

Tony Vo graduated from University of Calgary and he has been software developer for the last 10 years in online education and online games industry, healthcare. Some of his recent projects include tools/utilities to automatically analyze and assess student's homework in math, economic and financial accounting. Furthermore, in the last 2 years he's been working on build/automation for Calgary Scientific. Tony's main interest is in developing system effectively with a team and in developing algorithms such as high computing graphics algorithms.

Additional Details:

Come at 8am for the session that will run the rest of the day. We'll be in one of the board rooms to your left as soon as you walk in the front doors. Parking is free in front of the building.

Special thanks to our sponsors Innovate Calgary for the venue, Quadrus Development Inc., Brightspot Consulting, Dragonfire Inc., and Solium for the food and refreshments.