/dev/fun

Tools, techniques and tips to make your work more fun

about me

Ben Peachey

Creating software since 1985

When I was 8 years old

Job Titles

  • Senior Programmer
  • Senior Software Developer
  • Senior Software Engineer
  • Senior Web Developer

And that's just the last 10 years

Kick-ass Web Developer

Potherca

  • https://twitter.com/potherca
  • https://github.com/potherca
  • potherca@gmail.com
  • https://pother.ca

https://pother.ca/fun

Don't worry, I'll show this link again at the end of my talk

What is Fun?

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/fun
Fun is an experience often unexpected, informal or purposeless. It is an enjoyable distraction, diverting the mind and body from any serious task or contributing an extra dimension to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun

Fun is... Fun!

  • Amusement
  • Enjoyment
  • Good humour
  • Light-hearted pleasure
  • Playfulness

Why is fun important?

(You should already know this)

How do we have fun
(in general)

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1280119375

How do we have fun
(as developers)

  • Adulation of One's Peers
  • Creativity
  • Deep Concentration ("flow")
  • Getting From It What You Put Into It
  • Getting stuff done
  • Learning How Stuff Works
  • Learning New Things
  • Model Building
  • Power
  • Puzzle-Solving
  • Seeing One's Creations Live On
http://wiki.c2.com/?ProgrammingIsFun

Fun is personal

Different players = Different player types

Player Types

According to Bartle

  • Achiever (Planner, Opportunist)
  • Explorer (Scientist, Hacker)
  • Socialisers (Networker, Friend)
  • Killers (Politician/"Den Mothers", Griefer)

https://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/

According to Marczewski

  • Achiever
  • Disruptor
  • Free Spirit
  • Philanthropist
  • Player
  • Socialiser

https://gamified.uk/UserTypeTest2015/user-type-test.php

So... let people make their own fun

What is work?

Discover

Define

Develop

Deliver

Destroy

Discover, Identification of need, Concept, Learn, Study, Experiment, Research

Define, Decide, Design, Detail, Requirements, Planning

Develop, Coding, Unit/Integration Testing, Debugging, Documenting

Deliver, Software quality, Deployment, Maintenance

Deprecate, Destroy, Dispose

But... Should I have Fun at work?

YES

People who have fun are happier

Happy people

  • Work harder
  • Less sick leave
  • More productive

Examples of Fun
I 've had

Your Milage May Vary

Celebrate

July 26, 2019

https://sysadminday.com/
Beer Day CAPS LOCK DAY Chocolate Day
Cinnamon Roll day Coffee Day Corndog Day
Day of the Nacho Donut Day Emoji Day
Hobbit Day Mario Day Pancake Day
Star Wars Day Talk Like a Pirate Day Tea Day
Towel Day Vodka Day Wikipedia Day
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_secular_observances

Poke Fun at

Play Games

Word of the day

https://www.emoji-songs.com/en/songs/

Share

Ignore the haters

every game has rules

Rules for fun in the workplace

  1. Fun should add value
  2. Fun should be optional
  3. Fun should be inclusive
  4. Fun should be safe (NSFW)

"Good clean fun"

Not
 everything is fun

https://github.com/cristurm/nyan-cat

Discover

Define

Develop

Deliver

Destroy

Discover

Educational Games

Ruby

https://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior

VIM

https://vim-adventures.com/

CSS Selectors

http://cssdiner.com

CSS Flexbox

http://flexboxfroggy.com/

Swift

https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

Git

https://learngitbranching.js.org/

Be social

Be social

Online

  • Comments
  • Communities
  • Platforms
  • Social Media

Be social

In person

  • Coding Retreats
  • Conferences
  • Hackathon
  • Local Meetups
  • Summits

Define

The Hard Choices Game

https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/asset-view.cfm?assetID=28919

"Dice of Debt" Game

Agile Games And Exercises

Google it, yo.

?

Develop

git-smb

Play sounds effects on common git commands

  • Command & Conquer
  • Duke Nukem
  • Super Mario Bros (NES)
  • Zelda (NES)
  • ...

https://github.com/pascaldevink/git-smb

Git Muzak

https://github.com/mroth/git-muzak

Test Driven Development

Nyan Cat Test Runner

Github Repository
JS - Karma dgarlitt/karma-nyan-reporter
JS - Mocha https://mochajs.org/#nyan
PHP whatthejeff/nyancat-phpunit-resultprinter
Python Gr1N/rainbowrunners
Ruby - minitest tgxworld/minitest-nyan-cat
Ruby - RSpec mattsears/nyan-cat-formatter

Deliver

Siren of Shame

  • The Big Siren
  • 50 LED's
  • Extra large speaker
  • Eight full inches of shame (20cm)

https://sirenofshame.com/

Other peoples code

https://codepen.io/2018/popular/pens/

Share your code

Share your code

Repositories

  • BitBucket
  • Github
  • Gitlab

Share your code

Snippets

  • Codepen
  • Gists
  • IdeOne
  • JsFiddle
  • Pastebin

Share your code

Live Examples

  • bl.ocks.org
  • Codepen
  • Dablet
  • IdeOne
  • JsFiddle

Destroy

Early Warning System

https://github.com/geckoboard/lightbuild

Chaos Monkey

Chaos Monkey randomly terminates virtual machine instances and containers that run inside of your production environment. Exposing engineers to failures more frequently incentivizes them to build resilient services.
https://github.com/Netflix/chaosmonkey

mindset

Accept

 existing things that should not be fun

Add

 new things that are fun

Reduce

 existing things that are not fun

Improve

 existing things that could be more fun

Sources:

https://pother.ca/fun