Software Apprenticeship Podcast Episode 3 is Out

This week we start off by throwing Jonathan into the deep end of pool where he pairs with an experienced developer on a 10 year old Java project that is the core of our signature product: Backstop.  Of course the company is called Backstop Solutions and so, in order to avoid confusion, we gave the project a different name for internal use:  Fund Butter.  The mystery of how such a terrible thing came to pass is revealed in this very episode.

There’s no way we couldn’t discuss DHH’s Rails Conf declaration and blog post: “TDD is dead. Long live testing.” This, of course, leads to a discussion of our team’s test philosophy.

You can find it on iTunes (search for Software Apprenticeship Podcast), any podcast app’s search function, Google, this temp page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/software-apprenticeship-podcast/id868371146 or use the RSS feed directly if your into that sort of thing: http://softwareapprenticeship.libsyn.com/rss



Our panel (composed of Toby Tripp, Matt Pyra, Eric Johnson, Jonathan Howden, and I) meander through quite a few topics.  Here’s a breakdown by time of the various topics:

01:27 Backstop’s 2 day bug bash
02:00 The apprentice has to tackle a 10 year old Java program
06:22 “Everything needs to have an ID if you’re going to make it Hibernate-y” - Jake “super technical” Scruggs
08:21 Why we call Backstop “Fund Butter” within the company
10:50 The apprentice encounters Selenium
12:42 Troubles with regression/integration testing through the web browser.
13:43 “Unit Testing is Dead” - DHH 
20:00 Pairing all the time vs code review
21:51 Toby talks about the Hill Air Force Base pair programming study mentioned here: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=29410
26:40 The Wall of Awesome - Backstop’s way for employee’s to recognize and thank other employees
47:21 The anti-college movement
49:36 The “Expose your ignorance” apprenticeship pattern with examples/confessions from Jonathan, Jake, and Toby
51:14 The C3 project comes up with near 100% frequency when >= 2 die hard XP'ers are in the same room.

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