Preparing for class one

Before the first class, please do the following

1. Read "The Making of an Expert" (Harvard Business Review) (Due on first day of class)
2. Provide Todd with your stackoverflow id on this page (Due on first day of class)
3. Identify programming language to use during course. ("growth" language.) The student will need to have some familiarity with the language already, and wants to go deeper into it. For someone early in their career, this is probably their primary language. For someone later in their career, this can be a language they are branching out into. The student is committing to using this programming language for the duration of the course. When a developer selects a language they are also selecting a community. The student needs to know one mentor who is more expert at the language than they are. (Due on first day of class)
4. Identify a learning focus. Consider something that you want to grow in or a known area of weakness. Examples include "I want to write all my code using Test Driven Development" or "I want to write code that has less defects in it." or "I know that I can solve a software problem, but my solution isn't elegant." Borrowing from the Software Craftsmanship distribution list, this might be a "maiden speech" of the form "For me Software Craftsmanship includes the notion of 'X'. I want to get better at 'X'. What does the community think will help me improve 'X'" (1/15/2011 by Rare Pleasures aka email@acgreen.co.uk) Once you have identified this, please do a "blog post" that starts with "Maiden speech" in its title and tag it as a "Maiden speech" -- an example is here -- note that titles might be unique on this system. (Due by second class)
5. Develop a plan for improvement and measurement. (Due by second class)
   • How do you know if you have achieved your goal?
   • How can you measure it?
   • know if you have 
6. Begin to identify activities to do. See definition here.