Introduction

"CodingWithMe - Learning by Coding" is a coding workshop, it aims to learn one technology in 90 minutes by practice.

Normally CodingWithMe runs several different sessions every month to let participants to choose, see the real poster below

I initiated this in 2009 inside R&D department in the company, and so far it has 46 times, it is quite successful.

In detail

Each CodingWithMe session includes practical coding exercises (recommend to >50% time on coding). Topics could be directly connected to the current work, and mostly it introduces new things.

Take a look at one example Learn REST API with Python in 90 minutes

Typically the first exercise is "hello world" sample, it shall be able to executed in 10-20 minutes, less talking more coding. And everyone shall follow it.

After that, the teacher will give more explanation, then with exercise 2

Last exercise could be little challenge.

As I stated above, mostly it is organized with several sessions to let developers to choose since different people had different flavors.

Benefit

The area of engineering skills and SW craftsmanship is truly important and lessons learned from this initiative are e.g:

• Improved the awareness of the new technology
• Boost innovation in efficiency way
• for their coding skills (among other things)

This initiative was started by a number of developers based on the insight that growth of coding skills is a key area of importance and they then organized this community by themselves.

So running this inside community or company can get more recognition.

Others

Why 90 minutes

60 minutes are too short to prepare environment and 3 exercise, 90 minutes is just ok

And I used to have this workshop in the afternoon, it can be finished in 2 time slots: 13:00-14:30 and 14:30-16:00

How many people inside one CodingWithMe session

6-10 is the right scale, since the teacher needs to take care the progress, too many people are not easily to be covered.

Less than 6 people is little waste

What's the big difference compare to self-learning

Some people learn it and forge the good exercises, just bring your laptop inside and learn on topic one month.

Reference

• Real CodingWithMe example 1: Learn REST API with Python in 90 minutes
• Real CodingWithMe example 2: Learn MultiMarkdown to book