Today was the start of my pairing tour! Pretty exciting stuff for an 8th light apprentice as this means I’m ever closer to the ultimate goal of becoming a crafter. Having learned so much along this journey thus far my hope is that I can bring value and teamsmanship to my pairing partners and give them a sense for how 8th light stands to benefit from my continued presence. Ultimately the individuals I pair with are the review board members that decide my fate come May. I know that notes are being made on the things I do and so I’m keeping at the forefront of my mind that my actions during these sessions will have ramifications that will outlast the weeks and days ahead.

James Christie is the first review board member during the pairing tour, and thus who I began to work with today. He had a couple of calls and I was able to sit in for most of that time. It was impressive to see him context switch quickly between coding vs consulting task, especially since this is something I struggle to do well. One other important observation I made was in regard to James desire to improve himself. He mentioned that one of the things he loves about working at 8th Light is how he’s encouraged to continually search for ways to be a better professional. It made me consider what I’ve done lately to consider my professionalism and how I might do more to ensure I’m constraining aspects of my personality that might distract myself or others from work.

We jumped into some client code fairly quickly. This was my first experience with the AngularJS framework and Typescript but I think I did alright considering my limited exposure to any statically typed language at all. James did not disappoint when it came to walking the walk of software craftsmanship. We wrote no code before we wrote a test. This was quite interesting because it gave me a chance to consider how to go about testing frontend frameworks. We worked on getting some sidebars in new client app decoupled, as they were triggering one another’s visibility. Overall it was a fun first day and I’m excited to learn more from James over the next 2 weeks and beyond.