Clean Code Retreat

A week ago we had a code retreat at work. This is essentially a day spent away from our normal work in which we can learn about an aspect of software development.

This code retreat was all about Clean Code and Test Driven Development. The day was ran by Chris Sharp who is an STSM at IBM.

The day was a complete success in my eyes. I've already been pushing for people at work to begin reading the series of Clean Code books and this day re-inforced why it is valuable.

I think there were a number of things that people were quite surprised by:

• ​It is actually quite difficult to develop in a strict TDD way. (people often forget the Red, in the Red, Green, Refactor cycle)
  
• The outcome of the code was much simpler and a lot of people agreed that they likely wouldn't have reached that outcome without TDD.
• Software Development is a craft. We tend to get used to churning out code and it can be easy to forget that practice is important.

So those are just a few of the notes that the group had after the session.

Clean Code day to day

I really want to get clean code and TDD brought into our every day work so that we can all benefit from it, although this is going to be a challenge.

I am going to have to lead by example with this, reinforcing it in my scrum's social contract and showing the results.

Finally we are having a second code retreat as only half of the Lab got to go to the first one. I have put myself forward as an "Advocate for Clean Code" in which I will help Chris run the session by going round and giving people guidance whilst they are performing the Kata's.

​Thanks :)