Articles Feed

Hangman Tournament

by: micah | August 28th, 2009 | 12 comments »

Several months ago, I hosted the Ruby Battleship Tournament. It was an all-round fun event where craftsmen sharpened their claws and pitted their skills against their peers. Since then, there has been much interest in the next tournament.

Today I am announcing the commencement of the Ruby Hangman Tournament. In this tournament your challenge is to build an AI to play hangman. Unlike Battleship, your AI will not battle against opponents, but will instead play solo. You must teach your player how find words as accurately and as quickly as possible.

The most prodigious player will be dubbed Tournament Champion. But this is a tournament of Craftsmanship, so the ultimate title will be awarded to the Tournament Master. To earn this most prestigious of monikers, your player must not only play hangman spectacularly, but also be crafted with the utmost quality of code.

Getting started is easy. Simply follow the instructions to get a default AI generated and running on your computer. Then all you have to do is tweak the solution to be as good as you can get it before the end of September.

This is a great way to practice your craft. You could introduce the tournament in your next user group meeting. Show it to your peers over lunch and learn.

You can also just play the game if you like (screenshot below). Good luck!

We're Busy!

by: eric | August 23rd, 2009 | 0 comments »

This week is a big one for the 8th Light team. Let’s head through the highlights:

Agile 2009

As usual a large number of 8th Lighters will be participating at Agile 2009. This is always a fun and educational experience for us, and this year it’s in our hometown. Let’s go through the talks we’re giving:

Mission Impossible: TDD and Javascript In the New Orleans room on Tuesday at 11:00 Jim Suchy will be giving a talk on doing TDD in Javascript. Javascript is a language that people tend to claim is “untestable” or “not worth it” but Jim will be showing that testing is not only possible, but worthwhile. In addition he demonstrates some of the neat features that make Javascript a cool language.

Ruby Kata and Sparring Back in the New Orleans room on Thursday at 9:45, Micah Martin will be talking about Ruby Kata and Sparring. Everybody wants to be a great developer, but how do you do it? Micah will show two different practice techniques, kata’s and sparring. If you go to this talk you get to judge the speaker and tell him how well he codes. How often do you get to do that?

TDD on iPhone The Eric’s are giving their legendary talk on practicing TDD on the iPhone on Thursday from 2:00 - 3:30 in Grand Ballroom F. This time we have a special surprise for those who attend - a Randori coding session where you will code functioning iPhone application. Please wash your hands before attending, as you’ll be using my keyboard. Head to my github page to see a sneak preview of what we’ll be working on.

Live Aid Once again some 8th Light guys will be helping out with Live Aid, including our newest Craftsman Colin Jones. Come to the stage, write some Rails, help charity. 10 minutes or 10 hours it doesn’t matter. Experience in Rails or even web development are unnecessary - that’s what the mentors are there for.

chiPhone

The second meeting of chiPhone, the Chicago iPhone developer group, will be held at a special location this week: the Obtiva offices! Thursday night if you’d like to do some hacking head to the chiPhone website to register - or just show up. I only need to count so I order the right amount of pizza.

SCNA America

I saved the best for last. Software Craftsmanship North America is a joint effort by 8th Light and Obtiva and frankly it has the best speaker lineup I’ve ever seen. Registrations are still available and cheap! If I could take credit for this I would - but it really goes to the organizers, who did a fantastic job. The entire 8th Light staff well be there and available for discussion, questions, and to accept free beer from the attendees. Meanwhile two of us will be speaking:

The Business of Craftsmanship “Craftsmanship sounds expensive!” If you’ve heard similar comments from your supervisors or clients, then join Micah, Kevin Taylor and Carl Erickson, three experienced craftsmen-turned-entrepreneurs for this 30 minute panel discussion. All three panelists come from technical backgrounds and have built successful software development companies that are built on craftsmanship values, such as quality, learning, and community, and use Extreme Programming practices to develop software.

Apprenticing to Mastery Listen to Paul and Obtiva’s Dave Hoover discuss how an Apprenticeship program can benefit your company and your career. Software companies are always looking for ways to develop skilled developers. Formal software apprenticeship is the approach taken by more and more companies, including Obtiva and 8th Light. Over the past 2 years we have observed almost a dozen apprenticeships and come to recognize certain apprenticeships of developers that are themed by their aspiration to mastery.

This might be the biggest week in 8th Light history - hope to see you there!

##