Keeping in the Agile spirit, I did a retrospective for Iteration Zero of my Season of Ruby. When I conduct a retrospective I cover 3 areas:
What did we do well
What can we improve on
What are we going to focus on in the next iteration to improve the process or the product
I am a team of 1 on this journey, so “we” is me.
What Went Well
Digging the Ruby Koans** - **I’m happy that I am not just blowing through them to get to the next subject, but asking questions when something doesn’t make sense or surprises me. I also find myself adding additional tests to experiment with behaviors
Love playing around in the IRB - This also has a lot to do with experimenting and following where my curiosity takes me.
Got a Ruby environment set - OK, so it is not the shiny new Mac I wanted, but RubyMine on my Windows laptop has been a very low-friction experience. The Mac will come. I have a birthday coming up and maybe I will be good to me.
What Can Be Improved On
Not writing enough code** - **Although I am learning with the Ruby Koans, I am not writing enough code.
Making really good progress, but need to dedicate more time - I’m happy with where I am, but the time goes by quickly. May need to dedicate just a little more time on a weekly basis.
Haven’t done anything with github yet - One of the goals was to set up a github account. Technically I have satisfied that criteria because I have an account…an empty account. That needs to change
What Am I Going To Do To Improve Things
As a rule, I usually only like to pick one thing to improve on, especially in a short iteration, but since these two things go so well together:
Do the String kata in Ruby - It’s a pretty straightforward problem, one that I have done in C# and C++, and this will get me actually writing code
Put the String kata in github, committing as new functionality is added.
Iteration 1 Stories
Continue with the Ruby Koans, doing these exercises