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2011 Global Day Of Coderetreat Toronto

December 3rd was the first Global Day of Coderetreat. Over 2200 developers in 90 cities participated. Back in November, while planning a trip to Chicago for SCNA, Corey confirmed that nobody was facilitating in Toronto. This city has a really active software scene, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Here’s the result:

It couldn’t have happened without help:

• Thanks to my fellow Coderetreaters. Practicing your craft at 8:30am? On a Saturday? Many commuting over an hour? That’s just baller.
• Thanks to my employer, Learnhub, for the office and license to cause mayhem with furniture.
• Thanks to Jay de Dios at Hireglyphics for sponsoring lunch, and moreso, helping build community.
• Thanks to Cinquecento Trattoria for cooking delicious lasagna and tiramisù (as you do).

We had 18 Coderetreaters, who roughly broke up into one-third Rubyists, one-third Java, and one-third .NET. Python, Clojure, Javascript, and Gosu made appearances too.

Our sessions looked like this:

1. Intro to the Game of Life. For some, this Coderetreat was a first. Plus it’s good to warm-up before the coffee kicks in.
2. Kent Beck’s Four Rules of Simple Design. There are various formulations, but I prefer the minimal:
   • Tests pass.
   • Reveals intent.
   • No duplication.
   • Small code.
3. Choose Your Own Adventure. Pairs picked one or more constraints from a list. Popular choices included no conditionals, no iteration, methods under 2/5 lines, “Tell, Don’t Ask”, and no objects.
4. Evil Mute Ping Pong. “Mute” because talking is prohibited. “Evil” because Implementors can use whatever loopholes they find to make the tests pass.
5. Make It Work. Write the worst code you can. Give it your best shot. A good way to wind down.

The final retrospective offered a variety of thoughts, with a couple common themes: [re]discovering TDD, getting to know both new and familiar languages, and thinking about the social aspects of our craft.

Srdjan and Martin plotting. Loaned my ARxTA/Github-stickered laptop. Pretty sure they tried breaking Ruby. Gonna have to check on that.

Damon and Marcus in Deep Pairing Mode.

Dan tells me he had a great time retreating into deliberate practice. Owen was happy to spend some time with Ruby sans Rails.

Tim laughs at the code while Taz… gestures at the code. That’ll teach it.

Mark and Roxanne also in Deep Pairing Mode.

Anna and Austin did unspeakable things with nested hashes. But hey, there’s a Clean Code guarantee.

Kyle firing eye lazors at the code while Chris drives.

Yehoram concentrates despite James utterly smashing the fourth wall!

The rest are on Flickr:

Jenna Morrison Critical Mass

Jenna Morrison was killed while on her bike by the driver of a five-tonne cube truck one week ago. This morning, we had a Critical Mass to deliver her ghost bike: More on Flickr.

Bruce LaBruce on Microsoft's “WASP technocracy” vision

Responding to Microsoft’s recent future concept video, LaBruce says:

I suppose you could argue that in the future all differences of race and class will be magically erased in favor of some sort of flavorless ethnic and political neutrality, but really, did Microsoft have to start the video by identifying us with the subjectivity of a privileged, white, English-speaking woman in, of all places, Johannesburg, a city where severe divisions of class and race are still entrenched despite the overturning of apartheid? After smiling at her vaguely ethnic chauffeur at the airport, our postfeminist avatar communicates through techno-telepathy with the decidedly black bellhop of her hotel. Apparently some things never change. The representation of race in general in the video is bafflingly backward thinking and unimaginative. Why not a future in which humans use technology to change the color of their skin at will, for example, or at least to overthrow the neo-colonialist regime that seems to extend unchallenged into the world of tomorrow? But no, our resolutely white heroine drifts into the hotel lobby like a doped pony, where other wealthy guests sit in the sterile chrome and silver environment like so much human taxidermy.

A virtual polar bear–now apparently an adorably extinct species thanks to global warming–asks her what she’s making for the bake sale. More charity, of course, which the elite class has plenty of time for now that their business interests are all managed so efficiently by the insidiously invisible technology on display.

The future is a bland, benign Minority Report in which actual minorities have been wholly subsumed by the WASP technocracy, rendered with a pale pastel blue color palette and bad lounge music. Thanks Microsoft.

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