Coding Dojo 1

Since I moved to Redmond I've been looking for a regular coding dojo in this area but I've not been able to find one. So I first planned a number of team dojos in my team but I felt that was not enough. I think an important part of each dojo session is to meet other people and learn their TDD tricks. So since I couldn't find any dojo in the area I planned one myself and invited people on one of the internal mailing lists (also set up a separate internal mailing list for the dojo). I thought Microsoft would have more than enough people to be interested in attending coding dojos.

So yesterday was the first dojo session I arranged open to all Microsoft employees. We did the kata I'm most familiar with: MineSweeper. For the first time we tried to build parts rather than stick to the end-to-end type of tests. It was an interesting experience and we got further toward a complete solution than I've ever seen myself. Not sure it was just because we approached the problem slightly different or the fact that the group was fairly small. The important part is that I got to learn a few small tricks and I'm pretty sure others learned some tricks too.

So now I just have to plan the next session...