Kata Performance

8th Light Apprenticeship - Day 36

The day had come to perform the Roman Numerals kata.

Over the weekend I had chosen a piece of music to perform to. I chose ‘Welcome to the Lunar Industries’ from the Moon Soundtrack. Mainly because:

(a) It was 10 mins long, the maximum time I wanted for the performance, and

(b) it has no words so no chance of getting too distracted.

Before the standup I managed to practise the kata about 5 times, I increased the font size in IntelliJ and plugged into a screen to ensure everyone had a front seat view. Whilst I know the kata well, I still felt a little nervous, mainly about the worst case scenario, which would have been having the tests fail but not understanding why, then getting in a tizz.

I shouldn’t have worried. I took a deep breath and wrote my first test. Knowing the drill I started to implement the solution, then realised I was typing the solution for the test I had in mind next! I caught myself and switched my mind to the current case, the most degenerative, translating 0 to empty string.

When performing violin we are always told to breathe and take our time, and not make a fuss about mistakes. I took this advice. A deep breath, and I was on a roll.

I did have a test fail during the refactoring phase, but I spotted it, and spotted why. When moving the roman numeral character for 4 (IV) from a constant into an array, I had transposed the characters (VI). A quick switch and I was back to green.

Once the kata was complete I felt relieved but also pleased. The feedback was really positive. A couple of tips about not refactoring too early, and to use vim to navigate around the file for quickness and the whole event was over.

Also, I didn’t use the mouse at all, which was the bonus on top.