Code Craftsman Saturdays - Is TDD ALWAYS the way to go?

Please mark your calendar and RSVP here.

Code Craftsman Saturdays alternates each month between a regular Code Retreat format workshop (skills practice/reinforcement) and a deep-dive format (learn new things). There's always plenty of both.

For February we'll explore when NOT to TDD. Kent Beck, the guy credited with inventing (he would say rediscovering) eXtreme Programming sings a different tune since working at Facebook (7 years), and not without well founded research.

We will have breakfast together starting by 8:30 and get to know one another. Around 9 I introduce the challenge and get people started. You and your chosen pair will wrestle with the problem for 45 minutes, and then we'll put laptops down and do a brief retrospective. The retrospectives allow all to share what they learned and to maybe choose something to do differently next time. Then we do it again.

What's going on here is learning, and practice. One of the best values is learning from one another, and pair programming with people you would otherwise never have the opportunity to work with. You get exposed to different ways of thinking, different habits, and different skills, roughly 6 times in the course of one day. We do it every month, so we've gotten pretty good at it.

The primary focus of a deep dive in new learning. The primary focus of a code retreat is practicing our skills until they become great habits.

Image courtesy of Antony Marcano.