cyber-dojo

• what is a dojo?
• what is cyber-dojo?
• why cyber-dojo?
• try cyber-dojo now
• run your own cyber-dojo server
• open sourced
• less is more
• thank you
• screen shot

what is a dojo?

a dojo is a place where martial artists meet to practice their martial art!

what is cyber-dojo?

cyber-dojo is an online browser-based coding dojo. Each group...

• writes their code and tests inside a web browser
• presses their run-tests button to submit their code and tests to the cyber-dojo server
• the server saves the submission, runs the tests, and returns the test-outcome to the browser as a traffic light:
  • red if one or more tests failed
  • amber if the tests could not be run (eg syntax error)
  • green if all the tests passed
• a dashboard shows the traffic light history of all groups. Click on any traffic light to open a diff-view of that submission.
• start a new practice session from any diff-view

why cyber-dojo?

I built cyber-dojo to promote deliberate practice of

• test driven software development, and
• team dynamics and collaboration

I strongly believe that if you practice coding using your normal development environment then you are likely to be drawn into an unhelpful "completion" mindset.

Practising in a cyber-dojo helps to combat this tendency since a cyber-dojo is so obviously not your normal development environment!

Practising in a cyber-dojo helps you to concentrate on the practice. Practising in a cyber-dojo helps you concentrate on improvement.

try cyber-dojo now

The online server is at http://cyber-dojo.com and supports numerous exercises and the following languages

• C, C++, C#, CoffeeScript, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby
• I've recorded a video of me doing the Roman Numerals exercise in Ruby using cyber-dojo (an early version) so you can see how it works.

run your own cyber-dojo server

• I have created a VirtualBox TurnKey Linux cyber-dojo rails 3 server image which you can grab at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11033193/CyberDojo/Turnkey-CyberDojo-20120515.ova (817 MB)
• Mike Long has written some TurnKey Linux installation instructions to go with the previous image.

open sourced

• The cyber-dojo server source code (Ruby on Rails) lives on GitHub.
• The infrastructure is rudimentary, but it's a start. Something to learn from and build on. Any feedback or help would be very welcome.

less is more

• I put a lot of effort into removing features from cyber-dojo. For example, the editor does not have colour syntax highlighting and that is deliberate.
• The simpler the environment the slower and more deliberate the practice and the greater the need for collaboration and communication.
• My Kanban 1's Game is also all about encouraging collaboration amongst developers.

thank you

• Olve Maudal, Mike Long, and Johannes Brodwall - thanks guys - I really appreciate all your help and encouragement.

screen shot