Background

Lauren Bossavit and Emmanuel Gaillot wrote in a workshop abstract for XP2005:

If I want to learn Judo, I will enroll at the nearest dojo, and show up for one hour every week for the next two years, at the end of which I may opt for a more assiduous course of study to progress in the art. Years of further training might be rewarded with a black belt, which is merely the sign of ascent to a different stage of learning. No master ever stops learning. If I want to learn object programming… my employer will pack me off to a three-day Java course picked from this year's issue of a big training firm's catalog. Nuts to that – acquiring coding skills is not an instant gratification process.

A Coding Dojo is a coding session centered around a programming challenge. The challenge is small in scope and often patterned after pragmatic Dave Thomas idea of Coding Kata.

Laurent Bossavit's Coding Dojo in Paris has been running on a weekly basis since January 2005. It has been a weekly programming class where programmers of varying skill levels meet as equals.

Thomas Nilsson and Andreas Larsson at Responsive Development Technologies learned about the Coder's Dojo when we attended the conference XP2006, where Christophe Thibaut and Emmanuel Gaillot presented a workshop on the subject. We thought it was an excellent idea using programming katas for learning the craft of software development, and immediately spent one of the bright finish summer nights coding the Bowling Game kata together. We were also very attracted to the randori format as an environment for a group to share software development knowledge, and wanted to start up a Coder's Dojo in Linköping, Sweden.

Read more at the community site: www.codingdojo.org

Here are some links to other dojos out there:
Agile, Finland
Agile North, UK
Pittsburgh Coding Dojo, USA

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