Today I spent the morning trying the Bowling Kata. I could not quite get it working and was still confused on best practices of the test driven development workflow. I reached out to my mentor Alex and asked if he generally wrote clean code the first time or if he wrote code and then refactored later. This tipped him off instantly that I had not watched Uncle Bob’s videos on test driven development.

In my head getting the bowling Kata was the most important thing to get done so that I could practice it a few times a day. I thought I needed to get it done before I did anything else so that I could integrate it into my daily routine. It turns out, that not watching the videos on test driven development (doing my research) was my biggest block. I took a step back, watched the video and everything just clicked instantly. (It helps that Uncle Bob actually walks through the entire Kata during the video). I’m glad I decided to reach out to my mentor when I did. If I hadn’t I probably would have wasted a lot more time trying to figure things out instead of taking the time to research best practices.

I have now completed the Bowling Kata for the first time and also finished all of Uncle Bob’s Fundamentals series. This led to me looking at my estimates for all of my stories for the week. That’s when I noticed that I had drastically underestimated my Solid Principles videos story. I estimated it would take 1 day. Turns out it is 14 hours of videos, which would make for one very long day. My whole day Saturday is free this weekend, so I’ll get them knocked out then.

Tomorrow I think I’ll start my day with the Bowling Kata followed by a long day of watching some Uncle Bob videos.

-Scoops