The Great British Bake Off and The Great British Sewing Bee are very popular TV shows. Each week the contestants take part in a baking or sewing challenge and the judges choose the best and the worst, with the worst having to leave. This is very entertaining as you watch the drama between the contestants and the reactions as the judges tell them they are rubbish.
Could this simple format be applied to computer programming? I think it could.
The only developers I know argue about the best way of tackling different problems, despite being friends. I am going to assume that this is typical behaviour and not unique to them. So for this TV show, we will split the contestants into pairs, that way we would get the added drama of how well they work together.
I am still undecided if the pairs stick together each week with one pair leaving or if we randomize the pairs with one person leaves. The second option would cause there to be a group of three every other week, not sure if this would be a benefit or a curse for that group.
My friends who are experienced programmers have agreed to be the judges, they both have experience of hiring and firing people, know what to look for in good code, and never agree so should be entertaining enough.
On the bake off the contestants don’t really know how well they have done until the judges cut into their cake and take a bite. For the code off we could not compile the code until the judges run it, would make coding extra difficult as if the contestants are anything like me, I run my code every five minutes to see what affect that change has made.
So what challenges can we come up with?
- Web Design week
- Stored Procedure week
- Mobile App week
- Loops
- Logic problems
- Bugs weeks
- Performance issues
I think we are onto a winner here. What does everyone else think?
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