Hudson Software Craftsmanship

BallFlow and JavaScript

Brendan Enrick — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:30:00 GMT

For a meeting in late December, this month's HudsonSC turned out very well. We had a great group of craftsmen in attendance. There were 15 of us in attendance, and we started out with an agile game called ball flow.

After the game, we discussed it as well as other agile and kanban ideas. Short cycle times and decreasing WIP were our primary topics.

Ken Nagorski was nice enough to share with us an interesting JavaScript curiosity he'd come across recently. People were pulling up their chrome consoles and investigating as the group collaboratively figured out how everything worked.

We're looking forward to seeing everyone at our next meeting in January!

Meetings are scheduled for the third Wednesday of each month. See you soon!

Last Craftsmanship Meeting of 2012

Brendan Enrick — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:53:00 GMT

Our last meeting of 2012 has been scheduled for December 19th.

As usual, it will take place at Henning Software's offices, located here:

102 First St, Suite 211
Hudson, Ohio 44236

You can park on First Street, or between the meeting location and the library. The First Street entrance is just south of the Tomato Grill restaurant.

Bring a laptop with your development tools of choice to use during coding exercises, if you can.

The meeting doesn't start until 6:00, but people arrive as early as 5:30 if you're interested in starting a discussion early. The meeting ends at 8:00, but some people stay late for more discussion and/or a drink at the local pub.

Three Year Anniversary Meeting

Brendan Enrick — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:03:00 GMT

Almost three years ago, HudsonSC was founded by Brendan Enrick, Steve Smith, and Rich Henning. Our first meeting of the group was held on August 19, 2009. That makes our next meeting on August 15, 2012 our three year anniversary meeting.

In celebration of this achievement, we will do exactly what we always do:

Some lightning talks or other brief presentations
Discussion about software development and software craftsmanship topics
Programming in pairs or in a group followed by discussing our solutions
(Optional) Walking over to Kepner's Tavern to sit on their patio and enjoy drink, food, and more conversations

http://hudsonsc0812.eventbrite.com/

July 2012 Craftsmanship Meeting

Brendan Enrick — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:14:01 GMT

The July meeting of the Hudson Software Craftsmanship group is on Wednesday July 18th, the third Wednesday of the month as always. We will be meeting in the Henning Software office at 102 First Street in Hudson, OH.

Come join us for some technical discussions, and if you're able, stick around after for further discussion with food and drink at Kepner's tavern.

Use this link to let us know you plan on attending!

July 18, 2012 Hudson Software Craftsmanship Meeting

May 16 Software Craftsmanship

Brendan Enrick — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:11:29 GMT

For this Software Craftsmanship gathering the weather looks nice, so some people will probably be staying after the meeting to have a few drinks at Kepner's Tavern.

The meeting will run until about 8:00 unless we go over working on a Kata or other programming exercise.

You're welcome to join us at the meeting or at Kepner's after.

Please sign up to let us know that you'll be there!

http://hudsonsc0512.eventbrite.com/

April 2012 Meeting

Brendan Enrick — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:32:00 GMT

April's meeting will be at Henning Software's offices located in downtown Hudson, OH on the third Wednesday of April, which is April 18, 2012.

Following March's successful meeting, I am suggesting as a topic for the meeting, that we discuss the topics from the NimblePros Software Craftsmanship Calendars. Last year's topic was Common Reuse and this year's is Death March.

If you'll be able to attend the meeting, please sign up now.

March 2012 Meeting Recap

Brendan Enrick — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 17:24:55 GMT

The March meeting went really well considering how nice the weather was. We had 15 people in attendance for the meeting.

Our first topic of the night was the Open/Closed Principle, which was last year's March topic from the 2011 NimblePros Software Craftsmanship Calendar.

Our second topic of the night was Reinventing the Wheel, which is this year's March topic from the 2012 NimblePros Antipatterns Software Craftsmanship Calendar.

Our programming exercise was the Supermarket Checkout Kata.

I have a more detailed recap of the March Software Craftsmanship meeting on my blog.

Software Engineering 101

Brendan Enrick — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:43:00 GMT

The Software Engineering 101 class we held in Independence on October 7, 2011 went very well. We received a lot of good feedback about the event from the attendees. Of our usual HudsonSC attendees, about 6 or so were able to be at the event.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 is our next meeting. It will be held in its usual place in Hudson, conveniently between Cleveland and Akron. We will be meeting in downtown Hudson for some programming exercises and discussions. Please try to arrive between 5:30 and 6:00, but it's OK if you need to arrive later.

After the event, some of us will be going to Kepner's Tavern for some drinks and continued discussions.

http://hudsonsc1011.eventbrite.com/

Application Katas in July

Brendan Enrick — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:03:00 GMT

July's Software Craftsmanship Meeting is right around the corner, so make sure you sign up now so who know you're coming. It helps with ordering pizza.

The next meeting is on July 20, 2011 at 6:00, and people will be arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 for the meeting. We're located in downtown Hudson conveniently between Akron and Cleveland.

In the past couple of meetings we've discussed doing exercises that focus on more than just the software development aspect of projects. We talked about looking at open source projects or taking on a project of our own.

If there is interest among our members, we might try doing an App Kata at our next meeting.

If the weather is nice, some of the people attending the event will be walking to Kepner's Tavern after to eat, drink, and continue our discussions.

Open Source Deep Dives and Projects

Brendan Enrick — Fri, 20 May 2011 17:03:19 GMT

A discussion topic brought up by Kevin Kuebler at this most recent Software Craftsmanship meeting was, "what can we do to improve the group?" The focus of the topic was in what activities the group could do that would be of interest to those in attendance. Some ideas came out during this discussion.

Working on a Project as a Group

The group tends to focus on practicing programming, pairing, testing, and other very programming focused aspects of software. With this exercise, the plan would be to spend consecutive meetings working on a project. The first meeting would plan the project and get started on the project with the second meeting being full of teams taking on challenges and practicing their software skills at all levels of development.

Deep Dive Into an Open Source Project

The plan here is to study and examine very closely exactly how the project works. Looking at what was done, why it was done, and deciding whether it was done well or could be improved in some way. This should be a very precise, careful look at the software led by someone who knows the project well enough to guide the group and knows enough to stay quiet and let the group figure things out collectively.

Fixing Bugs and Adding Features to and Open Source Project

What better way to learn about a project than to dig through the code adding features and fixing bugs? This exercise would involve selecting an open source project and cherry picking some bugs and feature requests from their lists. As small groups we can work through these.