Lessons Learned from the Code Retreat

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Code Retreat put on by the Global Day of Code. I had some reservations about attending this event because of my lack of knowledge in the Ruby Language. I also never attended an event that involved pair programming, but I purposely went with the idea that I was not leaving until I learned something.

For those not familiar, The event's structure was based around "The Game of Life."  and each session was 45 minutes and contain a limitation you had to implement with your pair.

Sessions:

1: No limitation other than pairing:
- I did not do much but watched and talked through the exercise. My pair was very helpful and very informative.

2: Must plan code on paper and then ping pong test:
- My partner did not know Ruby, so we coded in Python (he walked me through the syntax). I now have an appreciation for Python and will more than likely learn more of it down the road. I unfortunately did not learn how to test in Ruby but learned UnitTesting in Python...fascinating stuff.

3: Mute pairing ( testing without talking)
- I finally got to see how Rspec worked but had to learn the hard way without talking to my pair. Luckily my pair was very patient and descriptive in his notes on screen. I was als very confuse with the use of his text editor's vi.

4: Functional Programming (No side effects):
- This session we did not get very far. My pair and I were both new and had to search through the Ruby Docs for info on how to be functional. I still don't quite get it but it is something I can look into later. He also gave me a book he learned back to front called The Well Grounded Rubyist.

5: Code must be no more than 3 lines:
- By this session my brain was pretty wiped and we did not get very far. My pair was very knowledgable and basically went through the exercise making sure I understood the concepts.

Take aways: Just Try It..its ok to fail

I was a bit overwhelmed when I was asked, with no words, to solve a failure in Rspec, I had never seen Rspec previously. I am glad I attended the event and encourage any one reading to take a chance and attend a meetup. Also post your stuff to github and share. If you wait until you are Ruby Master you will miss out on learning from trying. I was able to share my git and everyone was cool with me being new and trying.

I was blown away on how helpful everyone was towards me. I plan to also start posting some ah ha moments as I get learning and figure it out.