For a long time, I have underrated coding katas. I used to say there is no reason to do the same task day by day just to improve my coding skills. Now, I learn a new technology stack, the Java stack and it has a lot of challenges for me.
After some learning stuff and fails, I have figured out that I spend too much time not by coding but by figuring out the code related infrastructure. Managing maven dependencies are a pain in the ass for me and almost every component has a new challenge because of the huge difference between .Net stack that I get used to and the Java stack that is a brand new to me.
So, after some fails, I have decided to do some coding katas just to learn the basic infrastructure and speed up myself.
FizzBuzz
FizzBuzz is a coding kata that teaches the basics of Test Driven Development. The task is simple. You count from 1 to 100 and for every number, there is the rule:
- If it can be divided by 3, the output is ‘Fizz’
- If it can be divided by 5, the output is ‘Buzz’
- If it can be divided both by 3 and 5, the output is ‘FizzBuzz’
- In other cases, we give back the input as an output
First day – OMG
The first day was terrible. First of all, I have created an empty Maven project. After that, I had to figure out what is the recommended project structure (that was the moment when I have realized that an empty Maven project does not contain the default project and package structure, I have to create this).
After these, I found the JUnit dependency and I thought that will be great. After some tests, I have figured out that the default JUnit version is 4 that I found and it does not support parameterized tests. After some googling, I met with some kind of plugin (or extension) that allowed me to write parameterized tests but in a very uncomfortable way (I wanted the same experience as I had using NUnit before).
And the problems came one by one. It takes about 5 minutes to implement a solution to the FizzBuzz problem. If I want to do that with a test-driven approach, it took about 20 minutes to me using .Net stack that I am familiar with.
On the first day, solving the FizzBuzz coding kata using Test Driven Development approach, took 58 minutes to me.
First reaction
I wanted to cry. I thought there is no way that such a simple exercise takes an hour for a Senior Software Engineer.
Analyze and improve
After a short walk, my mind calmed down and I could think about that hour. I tried to remember to the biggest gaps in my knowledge and wrote down a list of what I have to read during the night. That was on my list after the first day:
- Maven project structure. Can I generate the default folder structure?
- Unit testing. Is there any useful alternative to JUnit 4?
- IntelliJ: code refactoring shortcuts
- IntelliJ: run all tests shortcut
Doing the coding kata for a week
There was a long week when I felt pain every single day. I made a wrong Maven dependency structure, I have misconfigured the configuration file and could not run tests, I have tried 3 different unit testing tool and one time I made an unrealistic package structure.
But it took less amount of time to finish the Kata every single day.
Conclusion
After one week, I could finish the Kata under 20 minutes, including exception handling and boundary check.
Now, I can create a new project with necessary dependencies relative quickly and the most important part is that I have gained some confidence in using these tools.