Programming Log: CodeRetreat and Corey Haines

Saturday, March 10, 2012

CodeRetreat and Corey Haines

On my way home from work, I listened to Hansleminutes podcast on 3/1/2012. The podcast was a talk with Corey Haines. By the end when Hansel mentioned about Corey's coding and boarding experience, I immediately recalled the Corey! He is the man who was on .Net Rocks talk several years ago. Since then I followed him on Twitter.

His story impressed me. That's quite adventure way to update development skills. After I left his job in 2009, he started his one-year journey cross US, pair programming for a room and board. He mentioned in the .Net Rocks interview that he mention various people, include some gurus. I think that that year he learned a lot. Just like in his web page, he was like "a bee" to suck knowledge and development skills from people. Even at times he was working with people at the same or less level as him, he still practiced his presentation and personal skills. I think he was single at the that time.

I sent him a tweet to ask if he was the person on the .Net Rock podcast after the talk. I have never got his reply. That's OK. I knew that was him. Since then(by the end of 2009), I have not heard anything about him.

It was a refreshing news when I heard him again on Hanselminutes. This time, Corey talked about his project of code retreat. Basically, it is a kind intensive training, one whole day. A group of people repeat about 5 rounds of 45 minute pair programming focusing one specific problem. I really like this kind of project. I joined his coderereat organization on the same day after the podcast (in the evening).

I think that the project of coderetreat is a continuing and extension of his journeyman of programming. The journeyman was just one-to-one experience. Now he extends it to group of people.

In addition to his talk about coderettreat project, I found that he has been actively providing consulting services, talks, and some projects. In his web page, there are two web-based projects: MercuryApp and Slottd. MercuryApp provides a tracking service for any thing. Basically you score your feeling about project, word, thing or anything else. If you keep entering scores over a period of time, you may gain a view over the item you have tracked. You need to create an account with your email.

Slottd is a simple scheduler web service. You don't need an account to use. However, you do need to provide an email for your to update your schedule later one. For example, I created one meeting for the next Monday with 2 spots available. After the schedule is created, you will get two temporary URLs by email: one for update and another one for people to take the spot. It is a simple idea and quite useful. I think that this service might be a result of their code retreat projects.

All those web services are simple ones, but they are great examples to work together. Within a short period of time, a team work on the project in Agile. Every one will learn from it by hands-on-codeing.

Another developer who has great impact on programming skills and my life is Jean-Paul Sylvain Boodhoo. When I was working as a consultant at Bantrel, JP was invited to provide one week training on .Net with TDD. That was great training. Even during the day I had to work(no contractors were invited for free), I went to the training session after work 5:00pm immediately. He was so passionate with the training. He should finish by 5:00PM, but he just went to late 9:00PM, even 11:00PM. That experience fired my up. Since then I started to keep my skills update to date with my passion.

Not sure if there are any one in Calgary area like to form a similar project. The start may have just couple of developers. This kind of activity will tremendously benefit development skills for sure.