Nov 4, 2011

On my way back from India, I finally had a chance to read The Clean Coder, Uncle Bob’s latest book. It was something I’d been personally wanting to do for a while now; having been introduced to the tenants of software craftsmanship, professionalism, and test-driven-design as part of reading his previous book, Clean Code.

It also was something I’d wanted to do because last year, my company brought in Robert C. Martin for a two-day course on TDD for me and a dozen other employees. And it was amazing. My colleague Shawn compared it to “getting private guitar lessons from Jimi Hendrix”.

To my delight, this came up as an anecdote in Chapter 6 of his book, “Practice”:

Since then many programmers have adopted a martial arts metaphor for their practice sessions. The name Coding Dojo seems to have stuck. Sometimes a group of programmers will meet and practice together just like martial artists do. At other times, programmers will practice solo, again as martial artists do.

About a year ago I was teaching a group of developers in Omaha. At lunch they invited me to join their Coding Dojo. I watched as twenty developers opened their laptops and, keystroke by keystroke, followed along with the leader who was doing The Bowling Game Kata.

Reading this on the plane, I couldn’t help but smile. Uncle Bob has had a tremendous affect on my development style and coding habits, so I’m glad to hear that I had an influence on him, however small that might be.

Postscript: At the start of the session, we each introduced ourselves and explained what we wanted to get out of the course. Jessica’s conversation went like this:

Jessica: My name’s Jessica Codr [pronounced “coder”]

Uncle Bob: [pause] That’s the best last name I’ve ever heard. I need to put your name in my next book!

I think this counts.