String Calculator Kata : My first screencast trilogy

This is my attempt at Roy Osherove's popular String Calculator Katas. 


TDD StringCalculator Kata - Part1 from Gishu Pillai on Vimeo.



The Vimeo Album containing all 3 parts.

I'm using C# (VS2010+Resharper), NUnit and an IDE extension called Beacons 
(the wiki might be a bit behind the downloads tab :))


The videos look best when you have the HD option turned on and Scaling (hover on the video - top-right) turned off.
intermediate practitioners
For best results : download the videos and the subtitles. Use your media player with audio turned off and subtitles enabled at 2-4X. 
I don't do this (ever) so wasn't equipped with the proper audio gear (and coupled with the fact that I do not have an internet voice and can't code and speak at the same time, the audio is passable.)

beginners
Practice it a couple of times before watching. You'll get more out of it.


What I learned from it:
  • I need to practice more :) 
  • 2 modes of learning in a Kata 
    • muscle memory - goal: Speed. 
    • exploration - goal: Possible solutions. Take different choices and see how it ends up.
  • Automated refactoring (e.g. Resharper for C#) rules. Knowing your IDE and keyboard shortcuts goes a long way w.r.t. productivity
  • Streamline all routine work and bind them to keyboard shortcuts - like building, running tests, reusable code snippets/templates, etc
For people looking for screencasting tools on windows, I'd recommend
  1. BB Flashback Express - the free edition for screencasting. Export to AVI using ffdshow worked great for me.
  2. ShowOff - for highlighting keystrokes and chords. Keyboard Jedi wasn't too great with 64bit & keyboard chords (before my patience ran out).
 

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