[Pdx-pm] FW: programming technique meeting clarification

Raymaker, Dora dora.raymaker at xo.com
Fri Sep 27 16:54:31 CDT 2002


Mark>You are the programmer's Oprah!
(I think I'm scared of that...)

Okay, to stop being so obtuse, this is what I'm actually thinking:

Each meeting will have the following structure:

1. Programming technique TOPIC - provided at first by the sections in the
book

2. Reading of the relevant topic section - so "doing homework" isn't
required, and classist issues are avoided

3. Moderated discussion - you wanna say something about the topic, raise
your hand, get yr name on a list, and argue it all out.  What is good about
this technique?  What is bad?  When should it be used?  Have you used it?
What would you do different? stuff like that.  I've run moderated
discussions using this format for a similar group of individualistic,
opinionated folks, and it works really well.

4. Practical exercises - do the challenge in the book, or have some code you
brought in to illustrate a good or bad technique, possibly do code reviews
which consist of:  What is elegant about this piece of code?  What is yucky?
And WHY for both answers.

I would like this group to be NO MORE THAN 20 PEOPLE.  I would like to talk
about programming in general, but when it comes down to practical exercises
focus mainly on Perl (else my head may explode any you'll all get covered in
goo).

The topic of programming theory & practice is infinite, so I really want to
keep these constraints on it.  I've somewhat hesitated to lay it out like
this for fear of sounding fascist :-)

If someone else wants to organize a large reading group at Powell's, go for
it (& I'll probably show up!), but that's not quite was I was after.  After
hearing this rant, anyone still interested? ;-)

-D.
(p.s. if we decide to continue w/this, we may want to start another elist)



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