I’m at Bath Ruby 2015, live blogging some of the
talks
Photo by @Naomi_Freeman
- Dreyfus model of skill acquisition - LOOK UP
- Advice she got for going from novice to expert: “Read code”
- Codeclub: sunday morning reading group
- Rules for what to read: Exemplary code: popular, documented, well maintained
- Starting point: Sinatra’s
getmethod - “A huge fan of remote working: Any excuse to not wear pants is great” :)
- Met on google hangouts
- Did a retrospective on the sessions:
- Decided to pick only small things: < 100 lines of code: gives space to ask questions, reasearch etc.
- Understanding: it’s not really about reading the code: it’s about the convesations it starts.
- Keeping it small - 5 consistent people - helps to keep it engaged
- Important to have a ‘tour guide’ making sure everyone is engaged and contributing (?)
- Asking the question of crappy methods “how would we have written it?” is
really interesting.
- Therefore it’s not necessary for the code to be exemplary: lots of benefit in reading shonky code
- Drawing out knowledge gaps: the things you think you understand but actually have no idea about
- Reading something you actually need to use is a totally different experience: you’re much more invested in it
- Look at organisation of the code, not just the detail (how code is organised into files, what they’re called etc)
- Learning on your own is possible but really tiring.
- Learning in a bootcamp is very expensive and time-consuming
- Solution: codenewbie - connecting new developers with each other
- “The learning happens in the digressions”
- Knowledge = connecting the ‘dots’ of information