Thu, 28 Dec 2006

Obtiva Training Schedule for early 2007

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Fri, 10 Nov 2006

Reflections on Leading Obtiva's second Rails/TDD Course

Today was the last day of the second run of the Ruby on Rails TDD Boot Camp. It was an excellent week spent with a comfortably-sized group of strong developers from diverse backgrounds ... some with many years of web development experience, some with none, some with Ruby expertise, some with none. One difference from our first course was that, at least from my perspective, this group gelled. I attribute this difference mostly to my nervousness, and subsequent hurried delivery, in our first course. The second time around I was able to pace things better which had a calming effect on me, and I predict this will continue to improve.

My most noteworthy lesson from this course should serve as a warning for anyone considering taking this course in the future:

• We are teaching people Ruby and Rails and Ajax in the context of Test-Driven Development
• We build a Rails project from scratch via TDD
• The first two days are spent on introductory Ruby and Rails material

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Wed, 01 Nov 2006

Obtiva on Rails in Chicago and Atlanta

I've been pleased to see next week's Rails/TDD course in downtown Chicago fill up to match the attendance of our August course in the burbs. I'm excited to spend the week with another group of programmers willing to get their hands dirty in Ruby, Rails, Ajax and Test-Driven Development. I'll post an update after the course with thoughts, observations, and lessons learned.

I'm even more excited to see the course travel to Atlanta in December with my good friend Obie as the instructor.

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Sat, 16 Sep 2006

Rails TDD Boot Camp in Chicago's Loop

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Tue, 05 Sep 2006

An Impromptu Ruby/Rails/TDD Library

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Fri, 01 Sep 2006

Reflections on Leading Obtiva's first Rails/TDD Course

I just wrapped up the final day of our first Rails/TDD Course. What a week! I certainly have a newfound respect for teachers: after our first day my throat hurt, my feet ached, and I was totally drained. But by the end of the week I felt like I was getting the hang of it. This last day was particularly fun, as we ajaxified the Rails app that we built over the first three days. (BTW, the Rails app we built was a pseudo-replacement for XPlanner.) We wrapped up the course by creating a story/iteration management page that allowed us to drag-and-drop stories between iterations and the backlog.

A few reflections from my experiences watching an excellent bunch of Ruby/Rails newbies learn to develop in Ruby/Rails:

• Although it's a nice idea in theory, Rails' pluralized model/table relationship causes continual typos and confusion around when something should be plural and when something should be singular.
• Speaking of typos, although TDD mitigates some of the loss of feedback from Ruby's lack of IDE-error-highlighting support, a single typo in a Ruby program can be painfully hard to find. This is particularly painful for people accustomed to Eclipse or IDEA in Java, which go the extra mile to point directly at any problems in your code the moment you type it.
• RadRails is a great Rails IDE. I particularly liked its Plugin tab. I highly recommend it to anyone coming into Rails from Java on Eclipse.

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Wed, 23 Aug 2006

Obtiva's first Rails/TDD Course Sold Out

The last seat in our first Rails/TDD Course was sold today. I'll be spending next week with 8 developers from several regions of the United States building a Rails app from scratch using Test-Driven Development. Half of the attendees will be staying for Friday's Ajax on Rails add-on, where we'll ajaxify the application we built earlier in the week, using Selenium and Watir to test our Ajax interactions from end-to-end. Good times!

We're planning on scheduling our next course in the November-December timeframe. Contact Obtiva Training if you're interested.

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Sun, 13 Aug 2006

The Long Tail of Rails Training

I returned from a much needed vacation with my wife and kids last Wednesday to find out that Obtiva's first Rails/TDD course is close to selling out. I'm excited to meet the attendees in a couple weeks. My fellow Obtivians and I are working hard to make it a unique and rewarding experience. The structure and spirit of the course will be inspired by The Coder's Dojo which I had the pleasure of participating in last year.

While on vacation I started reading The Long Tail book and so it was through that lens that I interpreted the news about the Rails course upon my return. When it comes to Rails trainers, I would guess that the distribution of success (as defined by reputation + number of trainings provided) follows the same power law seen in this graph, with the excellent Pragmatic Studio guys way over on the head. They are the blockbuster training group, no doubt about it. And in our celebrity-centric, hit-based culture, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they're the only game in town. But there's enough demand for Rails out there (for now) to generate some nice business for people down on the tail.

This is an interesting time to be part of a small startup like Obtiva. There is enough demand in our industry right now that we find ourselves openly cooperating with several other small firms rather than competing with them. I guess that might change when the market turns south, but I find it to be an encouraging phenomenon among companies on the long tail during times of abundance. And I wonder how that cooperation will affect those companies during times of scarcity. As more small companies offer Rails training it could be in their best interest to extend that collaboration into their course materials.

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