Our fourth dojo session, and the second time I present something with a pair to the rest of the group. I'm in favor of displaying our work to each others. It may have something to do with former experience in writing classes, both for theatre and music. Or maybe I'm just extraverted. My experience is, as mortifying as it can be sometimes, true gratification usually come through peers' jugdement. Or, as Christophe would put it, "my work ain't worth nothing until I show it to someone."
The format we are using so far is to have a pair work through their code while the others watch (the pair's screen is video-projected on a white wall), listen, and give any suggestion or comment. And, oh, the others may also get bored and do something different if what happens doesn't retain their attention. Such a format is something totally new to me -- and to the others, from the feedback I've got so far. Whenever I showed some code to an audience in the past, be it for a technical review or some sort of (shame, shame) egocentric show-off, I used to present the best code I could come up with, something accomplished, already written. The goal would be that we could all discuss how I wrongly used pattern Z and misspelled class names. On the other hand, the focus in our dojo shifts to how we come to a solution and, if a better one exists, how we refine what we have so far into that better solution.
This format strikes me as something very close to theatre. There are performers and an audience. There is a story, a theme, something unfolding. We are rehearsing, discovering meaning through repetition. I sense something very strong here that I don't fully grasp yet. Could there be connections between what motivated theatre times ago and what we are doing? Could it be that we are setting a safe environment, in which any scenario is allowed to happen? Could it be that exploring what may come, making it actually happen and enacting it over and over again inspires and drives us in strange yet powerful ways?
Had I to choose earlier an art form which I felt connected to the act of programming, I would have picked book writing without hesitation. Something static, written at some time, read at another. Few dojo sessions later, I am not so positive anymore. I speculate the act of programming is also about the here and the now: how you currently live through the problem up to a satisfying conclusion, and how I feel engaged, watching your sharing techniques and insights. No cathartic experience so far -- hold your horses, this is sill embryonic stage -- although this could become a personal quest.
Posted by Emmanuel at January 28, 2005 12:59 AM