This is the story of the first Coding Dojo in the world.
In 1995, Ward Cunningham invented the wiki.
The first wiki was used by Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc..
Some people discussed Object-Oriented Programming and Agile together and got to know each other through this wiki.
In 2003, Dave Thomas posted an article in which he described the Code Kata : how to master development techniques by practising programming exercises.
In 2004, Laurent Bossavit posted the following text :
Object dojo
If I want to learn Judo, I will enroll at the nearest dojo, and show up for one hour every week for the next two years, at the end of which I may opt for a more assiduous course of study to progress in the art. Years of further training might be rewarded with a black belt, which is merely the sign of ascent to a different stage of learning. No master ever stops learning.
If I want to learn object programming, my employer will pack me off to a three-day Java course picked from this year's issue of a big training firm's catalog.
What's wrong with this picture ?
Dave Thomas has got the right idea with his Kata, but it needs to be taken further. What I want is an object dojo.
During a meal between Laurent Bossavit and Emmanuel Gaillot :
- Emmanuel asked Laurent
About this dojo stuff, were you joking ?
- Laurent answered
No, I was being quite serious.
- Emmanuel replied
I think it's great, let's do it !
On 2004-11-02, there was an initial discussion about the shape of the dojo with several people.
During this discussion, it was decided that the dojo would not be owned by a company.
The dojo will need logistical support (room, projector, chairs …), and Epiconcept was the first to provide it.
On 2004-12-13, the first dojo took place, the participants practised in groups of two.
On 2005-01-10, like all the following dojos, the second dojo began with a retro, the first dojo was horrible according to everyone, they decided to practice together in a united group.
Since 2004, a new dojo has been held almost every week.
The group archived its work on the xp-france.net wiki, which has since disappeared ; they moved to the agile-france.org wiki.
The group took a break around 2014 and was relaunched by ToF in 2015.
They started archiving their sessions in a git repository hosted on Github, since the session of 2015-01-15.
They started using Meetup, since the session of 2015-01-19.
The last dojo before the lockdown was 2020-03-12.
The lockdown paused the dojo.
There was an attempt to resume online from 2021-01-28 to 2021-06-17.
The dojo has been back in person since 2022-05-13.
The dojo has been hosted by a number of companies, including :
- EpiConcept
- UT7
- Octo
- Zenika
- Arolla
- CodeWorks
- Enercoop
A wide range of languages were practised at the dojo, with many sessions taking place in :
- Ruby
- Haskell
Since :
- the term Dojo is commonly used by the developer community without knowing this story
- there are many Coding Dojos around the world
- the group (at the time of writing) has over 1600+ members