Road Thoughts - Practice

'Doing it right' vs 'Getting it done'

Back in November at RubyConf, Micah Martin did a great talk on Kata and Sparing. It was very inspirational to me, and I've been mulling over the idea of katas ever since then. Over the last couple months, as I've been focusing my attention on craftsmanship, the idea of focused and deliberate practice kept rising to the surface. After the first Code Retreat in Ann Arbor, I really had some specific thoughts on the influence of practice on our work. So, as I was driving back from Weberville, MI, I stopped outside Toledo at a metro park and recorded some thoughts.

The main topic of the thoughts is the idea of 'doing it right' vs 'getting it done' and why those have to be in opposition. The techniques that you can call 'your own' are the ones that happen when you have a deadline looming. How do you make it so that those techniques are the ones that you know lead to quality code? Focused practice.

Enjoy! And, as always, please either comment below or write a response on your own blog. Please send me a link to your blog entry, and I'll update this post to link to it.

[Michael Finney wrote a great blog post proposing some ideas for a java practicing project. Check it out.]
[Over a year ago, Chris Cyvas wrote a blog entry about discipline in software development. These concepts and ideas have been building for a while now; I think it is time we bring them to the forefront.]

Road Thoughts - Practice from Corey Haines on Vimeo.