My 9-year-old son Ricky and I left Chicago on our first night and made it as far as Lafayette, Indiana, before we stopped to sleep. The next morning we made it the rest of the way to Columbus, Ohio. Once there, we met our friends at EdgeCase, who were nice enough to order Chipotle for us before we arrived. They were in the middle of a Chipotle-filled lunch 'n learn when we arrived, where Marc Peabody was giving the crew a walkthrough of the under-appreciated J programming language. At Obtiva we call our lunch 'n learns Geekfest, and I believe it's a pervasive yet unsung advantage of successful software shops. It will be interesting to see whether the other shops I visit do something similar.
Once we settled in and got some of our wiggles out (ping pong downstairs, throwing the football in the parking lot) I had a brief conversation with Matt Yoho about EdgeCase's apprenticeship program, which is near and dear to my heart. (Stay tuned for a more in-depth interview with Matt on that topic.) Then Matt and I spent some time pair programming the rules of Conway's Game of Life in preparation for one of his many upcoming conference presentations. Here is a short play-by-play of the pair programming from Ricky...
Not much else to report. Ricky is learning how to use the camera, and we got our journey-legs under us. Also, if you're interested in a 9-year-old-narrated nature walk around the EdgeCase "house", Ricky has obliged. Day 1 raw photos are available too.
