Sunday, April 17, 2011

Episode 51 - Xerxes Battiwalla talks Shouldly

While Richard is away on holidays, an anonymous host breaks into the Talking Shop studio to interview Xerxes Battiwalla on his work as maintainer of the open-source Shouldly assertion library project, as well as his experiences tutoring computer science students on programming.

Enjoy!

Links:
Xerxes Battiwalla - @xerxesb
Shouldly
Paul Stovell's Tape project

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Duration 34:28 mins | Download mp3

3 comments:

  1. Excellent show guys. I really enjoyed the discussion around tutoring computer science students. While I really enjoyed my university degree it's unclear how much of what I learned is applicable to my day-to-day work. For instance, I never came into contact with source control until my second job! Learning svn and jUnit at uni would have put me light-years ahead. Having said that I subscribe to the Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years philosophy from http://norvig.com/21-days.html

    I have to admit as well, Xerxes attitude of "if I don't teach these guys, who's going to?" is very inspiring. *Checks schedule for free space*

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  2. Heh, I never expected anyone to *use* Tape :) Glad it could play a small part in creating something as cool as Shoudly.

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  3. @mike - thanks for the compliment :) It's kinda sad to think that students are getting out of uni without some of the most fundamental skills (as far as development is concerned). The course(s) i'm involved in are lucky enough to have open-minded subject coordinators, so the course is evolving albeit slowly.

    @paul - yup. definitely, definitely more straightforward than any other solution.

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