cosAgile

"Joined" cosAgile a while back, after going to a Ron Jefferies presentation they hosted. It was good stuff.

So - one of the things that Ron talked about was "practice". Many "artists" practice, but as software developer's we rarely do. We usually just "do". (And there is a whole discussion about whether we are artists or scientists, whether the "art" that we do is artistic or a scientific displain, etc - which I won't get into here). Anyway... he talked about the benefits of practicing. Writing code, and rewritting it, and studying it with other people, and then writting it again. Not so much because of what it does, or for the goal of having something "done" - but for the joy and learning of just practicing.

So - cosAgile meets every Tuesday at lunch for about an hour to "practice". I've gone two weeks in a row now. After my first time I thought it was just a blast. Not perhaps in a skiing or riding a roller coaster way, but in a Hackers kind of way. Just getting together with other hackers/developers and working on some code. Learning from each other. In a non-work related, not within my own team or company, no management driven deliverables, kind of way. Just doing something for the joy of doing it. And it was very cool. So I'm going to try and go every week.

I've contributed a few pages to their wiki and added a small bit of code. Nothing large - but again, just the idea of learning a new language (since I don't know Java) and working in a new IDE (since I don't know Eclipse) and interactive with other people in the field. All good stuff.

I'm psyched about it. :)