Day 2

Good morning everyone... I'm just finishing this blog this morning because I was absolutely shattered yesterday. I spent all day in front of the computer minus time during the lectures... It was intensive and my eyes were so tired. Having said that... I've bowled to the tube station just now on a clear blue winters morning feeling amazing and looking forward to today. I'll just carry on from last night... 

Day 2 -

So that's day 2 over... And I am absolutely shattered. I'm writing this on the tube on the way home so that I can collapse into bed as soon as I get home. We had been forewarned about the importance of rest, diet and a healthy lifestyle... Something that Makers takes extremely seriously. 

Wellbeing

We had a meeting with Dana, who is "Chief Joy Officer" at Makers. She schedules time for meditation and Yoga throughout the day, and will make time for one to one sessions with you. She exudes so much positive energy, it is quite incredible... She promotes fun at work, a concept which is slowly filtering through to corporations and something that humanleaders.com strongly believes, something which my penguin is currently developing... Check out their website once it is up.

Object Oriented Design (ODD)

The morning lecture was about Object Oriented Design which is a relatively new concept for programming, I will leave this up to you to research if you are interested, but it is what most programming languages are based upon. 

We were informed of our task, creating the program for "Boris Bikes" and identified what the "Classes", "Actions" and "Collaborations" are to help with designing the program... Before pairing off and attempting to do it. 

My programming partner is more advanced than I am... And I struggled to keep up with what he was doing and what the coding meant. I will need to remedy this situation tomorrow and ensure that I don't spend all day looking at the computer screen; which is mostly what I did today. 

Pair Programming

The concept of "Pair Programming" is that you take it in turns to be the "driver". And "navigator". The driver is the person who types the program, the navigator dictates what to type and how the program should evolve. 

Communication is vital for a successful pair-program and at this stage in our learning, it's important that both partners take it in turns for each role... It is also important for the steps to be understood by you both before you attempt the next exercise and it is encouraged to have a play with the programming exploring the lateral possibilities. 

After a great demo from Sam and Henry, we were sent off to dive straight in... Fantastic!!! 

Test Driven Development

The afternoon lecture was about Test Driven Development, writing a test in what I can only describe as "almost plain English" and passing this through... If it shows "green" then test passed and we can use the "plain English" to base our actual code... And what is really surprising, is that the code is much much shorter than the test.... Well... It should be... But anomalies do happen at this stage of the learning :-)

We use a Ruby Gem called "rspec" which conducts the test... If it returns "red" then this will tell us where we have gone wrong... Here is a strange concept... We are actually encouraged to "break" the code to return failures so we can understand where we have made mistakes. 

Much Needed Pint

So, after an intense day, and my penguin was out with her friend, I went to the pub with some of the seniors for "one" pint. It was great chatting with some of the seniors, hearing their stories and their journeys which have lead them to Makers. 

Everyone at Makers comes from different stages in their lives with different backgrounds... But what is a common feature is the hunger to learn, the incredible positivity and amazing attitudes... The willingness to drop what they're doing and help others... They are "Knowledge Predators"! 

So today... We have an early lecture with someone who recently graduated followed by some more pair programming. I will be balancing my coding today with some group yoga and I will definitely play some ping pong... 

I am more excited about learning than Christmas... Please don't judge me!