Last week I was invited up to FredNUG where I did a presentation titled ‘Coding for fun and profit’.
The point of the session was to get developers writing code that they don’t write for their day job. I spent a few minutes in the beginning trying to discuss the Dreyfus Model of Skill Aquisition and point them to books like Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, Brain Rules, and Mindhacks. I then went through, what was supposed to be, a quick list of ideas for extra-curricular coding by yourself, with a friend or two, and in competition.
I ramble, I’m drawn to tangents like moth’s to a flame, and my quick list quickly digressed to mind numbing death by firefox tab.
I really had intended to write code with folks there, it’s the point of my talk. I’m doing version 2.0 of this talk next month at RockNUG on May 13th. Both as follow up resources for FredNUG and in preparation for my RockNUG talk I’ve been filling out a list of those ideas. The idea is to hit a slide or two, tops, and then link everyone to this page: http://blog.thequeue.net/coding-for-fun-and-profit/after which we’ll start doing some ping pong pairing, rotating pairs on a timer, and making sure everyone touches the keyboard and writes some code. Haven’t decided what problem we’re going to tackle, but it should be a much different, and hopefully much more enjoyable talk.
The links are cool, and I’d love to chat with everyone about them, but it gets away from the main point of the talk, so I’m refactoring it.
If you were at the FredNUG talk and have recommendations for me, I’d love to hear them.
