Coding Dojo 2019: Impressions from the Workshop

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn". ― Benjamin Franklin

We strive for sharing knowledge in a dynamic atmosphere using effective methods in programming. For the third time, we have organised a Coding Dojo workshop in our company led by our CTO Boban Miksin.

Our colleagues who participated in the workshop had the opportunity to solve familiar problems, practice TDD and SOLID principles and improve the quality of their code during pair programming.

We have asked Kim, Miroljub, Nemanja and Milan to share their impressions with us and this is what they’ve said.

Kim Novak, Software Developer:

“Safe-to-fail environment enabled us to work without feeling that we have to do something perfectly at the first attempt. After implementing one part of the request, we get new requests, and this is how the entire workshop is organised.

By changing the request I realised that the initial approach was not good and I learned a lot from it. By changing the pair you work with, which is also a part of this workshop, you gain insight into a different approach to solving a problem. After we completed our assignment, we all changed our working stations and got the chance to see how other pair solved the same problem. This helped us all learn a lot.

Boban gave us useful advice and prevented us from overengineering. Pair programming was very useful and helped us improve not only our programming skills but our communication skills as well. Finally, Boban showed and explained his own solution to us where I had a chance to learn more about clean code and good software practices.

I am very happy that the Coding Dojo workshop was held and that we have people inside our company who find Software Craftsmanship important.”

Miroljub Enjakovic, Software Developer:

“Pair programming at this workshop enabled me to get to know the colleagues I don’t spend so much time with by getting insight into their code and their way of thinking. I believe that it is very important for us as engineers to expose ourselves to different attitudes, ways of thinking and approaches to solving various problems.

Boban’s “just-in-time” pieces of advice are not invasive and they are very useful. I have encountered this kind of balance so many times in my work. 

After this workshop, I believe I have learned a lot in a very short period of time and most of the credits go to Boban himself.

I am looking forward to future workshops and gaining new experiences similar to this one.”

Nemanja Sobo, Software Developer:

“This is most certainly one of those workshops you think about long after it has finished.

From the assignment to every other aspect of the workshop whose aim was to simulate situations while working on real projects and help us deal with problems and solve them, everything was outstanding.

In many cases, Boban approached us and gave concrete and elaborate answers to any of our questions, which helped us learn a lot. And, finally, he presented his own solution to us, and explained to us why and how he implemented something through a discussion and a code review.

All in all, I hope there will be much more workshops of this kind in the future!”

Milan Kosanovic, Software Developer:

“I am thrilled with the workshop! I was at the previous workshop a few years ago, which was also excellent, and I am very pleased that this workshop didn’t focus on the subjects that were elaborated in the previous workshop. Things like changing pairs and changing working stations and, finally, code review were a breath of fresh air, so seven hours went by very quickly.

I would especially like to single out the parts of the workshop where we learned how to think about the requests and how to correct already implemented features for new requests, as well as how to analyse the other code base (through a code review) in order to implement that in some of the solutions in future.

The suggestions Boban gave during the workshop are timely and very useful. Also, the solution he presented at the end of the workshop amazed us as it was easily understandable and functional at the same time.

I can hardly wait for the next workshop.”

Why Are Knowledge Sharing Events Important to Us?

Vega IT is a place where learning continues. Thus, we choose to improve our skills whenever we have the chance, by organising internal conferences, internal lectures or software craftsmen sessions and coding workshops like this one throughout the entire year. We believe that it's important that each of our colleagues is on a steep learning curve because this will enable them to become even better at what they do.

We eagerly await our next knowledge-sharing sessions and the opportunity to watch brilliant minds solve complex problems in action.

Have you participated in any interesting workshop? Feel free to let us know which topics you covered in the comments below. We look forward to your suggestions! ;-)