First, this dojo reinforced some strong convictions of mine:
- practice is the essence of art. Whether you are a musician, an illustrator, a surgeon, or a sportsman, it is indeed by practicing everyday the same gestures (and by learning more of them) that you tend towards perfection.
- the best way to teach and share is to practice together, exchange views, talk about the code at hand. And do it a lot. At Eyeka’s I have practiced enough pair programming to feel the benefits of everyday technical discussions on myself (that’s how I learned Ruby & Rails from scratch) and on others (that’s when I saw good programmers become excellent ones).

I also discovered that the kata is not so much about what you do but rather about how you do it, how you present your code to others, how you explain your thought process and how you structure your ideas so they follow an intuitive flow, even for people who aren’t familiar with the concepts you’re dealing with. You surely can have a great kata on a very simple exercise.

Last but not least, I have been really impressed by Emmanuel Gaillot’s performance which undoubtfully required a fair amount of preparation and a strong concentration. The kata he chose to present — to a non Rubyist audience — was consistent and a very good example of simple and powerful Ruby code accessible to everyone.

It demonstrated the great intuitiveness of the language itself and was perfect to introduce and demonstrate the power and usefulness of Test Driven Development. For 2 hours we’ve been really doing TDD by the book (and not trying to cope with the test coverage afterwards)… And we got to see Shoes in action, Yay!

We’ll keep you posted for the next one!

You’re a little company, now act like one
“Be human. Stop hiding. Be yourself.”

Improving testing practices at Google
“Google had a team of Test Mercenaries, who joined different teams for a short period of time to help them with testing.” Ain’t it how testing first happens everywhere? That’s how it started at Eyeka anyway.

Blasting Frankfurt

Blasting of a chimney at the former Henninger brewery in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Sachsenhausen. Too bad nobody adjusted the levels.

Teach your kids to argue
Awesome post. Traditionnal parenting fans, pass your way. Thank you so much Jay Heinrichs for stating out loud the reasons I’ve been doing the same with my kid. One thing though : remember they’re only kids though, so some tantrum is OK for me. Don’t steal their childhood :)

Some people just never get credited for the amazing work they do. I’ve been thinking for a while now about writing a ‘thank you’ note to the people that really made my work-life smooth, easy and fun in the last 3 years.

To Benoit, Vincent, Mathieu, Didier, Mikhail, Daniel, Richard :
Thank you for your ever-positive attitude in an incredibly stressful environment
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with such generosity with me
Thank you for your unlimited coding and architecturing creativity
Thank you for your team spirit (probably the hardest thing to find in a… team!)
Thank you for always saying “hmm that’s tricky but let me check and get back to you” instead of “no that’s technically impossible” (AND getting back with a smart solution :)
Thank you for sharing your screen, keyboard and vital space :) during our pair-programming sessions

I find this quote from Mark Twain perfectly applies to you guys : “They didn’t know it was impossible, so they did it”

It’s been an incredible adventure, thank you for that, I’m not sorry it’s over, I’m just glad I was part of it.

Keep going

Splunk
Why not try it?

How to Spot Quality within Web Design
If you’re in a hurry and have time to read only one thing, read hint number 1 : Spacing. And re-read this again and again

White Space isn’t a wasted space. Just because you have an empty area, it doesn’t mean you have to fill it.

When I design the thing I hear most often is “could you reduce the white space here? Could we stuff more links in there so the space is not wasted?”
Listen. Carefully. There is no such thing as wasted white space.