Teaching TDD

TDD class at the IronHack 2nd edition (picture by @JackLondon84)

Last week I was the teacher in the second edition of the IronHack, well for the last two days of the week. This time I’ve joined the group on their second week rather than the fifth. So I’ve been the one introducing unit tests. It’s been quite challenging as it had to be using JavaScript. Many new concepts at the same time. Really hard for the participants but eventually absolutely all of them understood the benefits of unit tests and even the TDD cycle. They got the point with TDD. Fortunately,  my friend Fernando Moreno (who was a participant in the previous edition), was helping me out with the class. He was solving doubts and helping with technical problems and that made a huge difference. Being two people answering questions, was the key for the group to progress with steady pace. I am so grateful to Fernando, a great teacher assistant.

The group has a great potential, this training course is going to be a remarkable milestone in the life of many participants. It’s been a pleasure meeting the folks.

And… you know what? pretty much all the participants from the first edition have a job already. And I know that some of them are really interesting positions. This is great news, I had the chance to talk with four of them and they are very enthusiastic about their new careers. This fact says a lot about the IronHack project and I am glad for being part of it. The more I know the project and the people behind it, the more I like it.

On Thursday evening Marta Fonda (from edition one) came up to give a talk on personal branding after my class, it was a nice surprise and we had a great time with beers afterwards.

On Friday I organized a small coding dojo in the same venue and I had the chance to pair with Sergio Revilla and Vishal  Shahdadpuri, from the first and second editions. We had a great time, I could appreciate Sergio’s evolution which is impressive and we learned from each other. Pasku came out with a nice solution in Ruby. We ended up with a nice solution in JavaScript, also using a functional style.

I will back in the IronHack this summer in Barcelona. Check out their new courses on iOS development, in Madrid & Barcelona (summer and autumn).