New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

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Published Friday, February 13, 2004 2:13 PM by RoyOsherove
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Friday, February 13, 2004 9:27 AM by Darrell

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

Hey Roy, a talk on Refactoring would be ok, but it's just like TDD... you have to do it to understand it. Recently at my .NET user group, WeProgram.NET, a colleague of mine and I presented TDD in a very hands-on fashion, and we are doing the same with Refactoring in March!

I know we see all the speakers from INETA or local experts come and give talks, and we sit and watch and listen and think that is how it should be done. But when do you really understand what they were saying? Right, when you get home and play with the code! So why not do that during the meeting? You can usually get half the people to bring laptops, and the other half can pair up (pair programming? XP? in a user group meeting? Yep!).

Just a suggestion. Most professional speakers don't like the idea, but people with a teaching background usually do. This also doesn't work if you are demonstrating new technologies, like the ever-present yet oh-so-far-away Longhorn.
Friday, February 13, 2004 9:51 AM by Roy Osherove

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

Darrell: Sounds interesting. I'll put the idea in my back burner for a while see if I can make it work somehow. I think most the users don't have laptops tho, and it would require special preparation on their side. Also, the group takes place in offices which make it much harder to help developers by sitting next to them. It's built like a small movie theater. Not much room to move around each and every one.
Maybe move it to a different place.. I don't know.
Friday, February 13, 2004 10:09 AM by Omer van Kloeten

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

The note you made about too many user groups is right.
I can hardly find the way to convience my managers to let me go to user group meetings instead of working as it is... :/
Friday, February 13, 2004 11:14 AM by Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

I've thought about the order of the agile lectures and I've come to some conclusions:

It only makes sense to do a presentation on refactoring after the talk on unit tests - it looks like its going to happen that way, so that's good.

It only makes sense to do the presentation on TDD after refactoring. I mean, TDD is in essence:

1. Write "unit" test
2. Write the simplest code possible to get it to pass
3. Refactor the code
4. Repeat

This is currently scheduled to happen.

I'm worried that people won't really grok the TDD without having some time to mull through unit testing and refactoring, each one separately.

On the other hand, this currently is planned to take place in the VB user group, with meetings at a month apart, so, although far from ideal, I don't think the expectations should be that high to begin with.

I'll talk to you about this later, Roy, OK ?
Friday, February 13, 2004 2:52 PM by Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

Correction:

The second one should read: "Is NOT currently scheduled to happen."
Sunday, February 15, 2004 7:36 AM by Yura2000

# re: New Israeli User Group: Agile Development. What do you think?

Hi Roy
There my short thoughts about subject:
1.Refactoring - nice idea. One thing - I'd like to see really good warrior of the .NET or/and software development and not those, who knows to create long speeches without understand what subject is about... IMO number of such speakers(not warriors) increases exponentially, unfortunately.

2.User group -your obstacles are right. And here applicable the same as in the first paragraph.