Join us for the Global Day of Coderetreat on November 17th

InVision is hosting a remote-friendly event for the Global Day of Coderetreat. GDCR is an opportunity to practice software development and design in a friendly and low-pressure environment. Come join us on Saturday November 17th starting at 10AM EST (UTC -5) and plan for a fun and enlightening day. There is no cost to participate in this event.

What will we be doing for eight hours?

After a quick introduction to the tooling for the day and some administrative words, participants will pair off into teams and begin a 45 minute coding session. During this session, each team will work together to solve Conway’s Game of Life. This exercise will be all about test-driven development and getting used to pair programming.

When the first session is complete, each team will be asked to do one of the hardest things a programmer can do… delete their code. Starting from scratch will help us leave behind our initial solutions to the problem and begin the second round with a fresh approach. We will also have a quick retrospective, so that developers can discuss the exercise and share learnings with others at the Coderetreat.

In the second round, each person at the Coderetreat will pair up with a new partner and again work to solve Conway’s Game of Life. We will still be pair programming and doing test-driven development, but there will be a twist. What will it be? You’ll have to come to find out.

Over the course of the day, developers will participate in up to six pair programming sessions, each with a different and unique constraint. Any programming language can be used for these exercises and we hope you’ll have a chance to try a new language you have never used before. The emphasis is on fun and learning, so come prepared to challenge yourself.

What do I need?

You will need a computer and an internet connection that works well for video conferencing. Plan to spend the entire day at the Coderetreat. This event is open to junior and senior developers alike.

Please also come prepared with a remote development environment, like Cloud9 or Visual Studio Code with Live Share. Create a sample project in your language of choice that will give you a runnable Hello World program you can use as a template. This template will help you quickly spin up your environment, so you can be prepared for the next session. Expect that sometimes you will use your environment and sometimes you will use your partner’s environment.

Anything else?

We will have a lunch break at approximately 1PM EST. Due to timezones and the remote nature of the event, the break may not come at a time during which you are accustomed to eating. The break is a time to talk and socialize and it may or may not be about food for you. If 1PM EST isn’t a comfortable time for you to eat, we suggest you come with something ready that you can eat between sessions.

We look forward to seeing you at the Coderetreat! Spaces are limited — you can find out more and register for InVision’s Day of Coderetreat here.