Emily Bache - The Coding Dojo Handbook

Do you remember this old joke? A young man is on the subway, carrying a guitar case. Hes a member of a band that is performing a concert at Carnegie Hall; and hes running late. He dashes off the train and up the stairs, and realizes hes lost. He knows that the performance hall is close, but he doesnt know the direction. So he stops an old man on the street and asks: Excuse me sir, but how do I get to Carnegie Hall? The old man looks at the lad with his guitar case and says: Practice son, Practice.

It is a fundamental truth that all professionals practice. Of course professional musicians practice; and so do professional athletes. Lawyers practice they rehearse testimony and closing statements. Doctors practice, on cadavers, dummies, and even suturing oranges. All professionals practice.

What do we, programmers, do to practice? We write code of course. Lots of code. We write code at work, and then many of us go home and write more code. We do this because we love writing code; it is a passion for us.

But not all forms of practice are equal. Some ways to practice are better than others. Professional athletes practice games, but they also practice drills. Musicians practice their performances, but they also practice scales and etudes. These other forms of practice are designed to emphasize, and therefore improve, certain skills especially those skills that are hard to acquire and easy to lose.

Thats what this book is all about a special way to practice that emphasizes certain skills that are hard for programmers to acquire and easy for them to lose. Those skills include working together as a team, the disciplines of Test Driven Development and Refactoring, good design skills, and many others.

In this book Emily Bache describes one of the most popular activities to come out of the Software Craftsmanship movement; an activity that is sweeping across our industry: The Coding Dojo. Based on a martial arts theme, the Coding Dojo is a meeting in which enthusiastic software developers, intent on self improvement, engage in purposeful practice for the purpose of refining their skills.

The Dojo gives a formal structure to such practice. That structure is complete with rituals, disciplines, rules, and procedures that promote effective learning and minimize distraction. The Dojo is a safe place to practice with, and learn from, others. Best of all, the Dojo is fun!

In this book youll get a feel for just how much fun this can be; because Emily avidly describes the fun she has had in setting up, running, and participating in Dojos. Her enthusiasm is contagious. Youll read about her adventures, successes, failures, and just the overall great time shes had while learning, and helping others to learn, in the Dojo setting.

With her lively and readable style, Emily teaches us how to set up a Dojo, and what the principles, rules, and procedures are. She tell us how to deal with what she calls: Dojo Disasters; and she describes the various forms of practice such as Kata and Randori. And, perhaps most importantly, she provides a catalog of the exercises that she has found most beneficial in a Dojo.

But theres more to this book than a description of Dojos. While describing the disciplines and principles of Dojos, Emily also engages us with a very cogent and enlightening description of some of the most important software disciplines of the last decade. These include Test Driven Development, Refactoring, Continuous Integration, Test Automation, and many, many others.

In short, while this book is a wonderful workbook for practice; it is also a tutorial in what to practice. The subtitle says it all: This book is about making good programmers great.

Is that your goal? Do you want to be a great programmer? Then you dont want to miss this book. Because to become great, theres only one absolute rule: Practice child practice.

Robert C. Martin

17th November 2012