I have been in a programming study group for a while now and I wanted to share the experiences I had with it. I wanted to talk about specifically exactly how we have learned to study with each other, The struggles we have to coordinate times across timezones, and figuring out a good way to help the group feel useful. I will trying my best to give you tips and tricks to have a fun effective study session if you ever do find yourself hosting or leading your own groups!!

Study groups are hard because just like any other kind of club or group you have to juggle the schedules of multiple people. Some days I have been so busy that I wasn’t able to meet with them and sometimes they were so busy they didn’t have time to see me. Regardless we kept each other accountable and set ground rules for when our schedules would prevent us from showing up. The first major rule that we set was a minimum required amount of attendees. This is important because you have to understand the reality that the more people you try to coordinate for any event the more likely it will be that some people will have to miss. This is something that happend to us quite frequently and with such a small group we decided that it would be okay if a single person was out for that week. So we made sure to callout that if at least two people made it to the virtual meeting we would just run through the chapter together and move on. It sucks when you don’t get the input of everyone in the group but it is better to at least talk about it with someone then nobody and keep moving forward. Time is precious and so losing week after week trying to find the perfect time to host might not always make sense so this should be something your group should at least discuss and find some sort of compromise on.

The second thing we all had to agree on was timing. Taking into account the schedules of others is so important and finding them across timezones is one of the hardest parts. For this we had decided to let the people that had the gnarliest timezones dictate when we would be able to meet and ultimately settled to do it during lunch if only to allow them to not have to be awake in the middle of the night just to join in and contribute.

Lastly it is important to just pick someone to lead the discussions. They will not be the only one contributing to the group but you need someone to take a lead and drive converstations and bring up interesting things they found in the section read. It is also super nice if this is something that was rotating so that one person doesn’t always have to speak up as well as help with issues of the lead missing because they just can’t make it that week. It doesn’t stop the lead from not being there but it at least lowers possibility of it being an issue. There will still come times for when the lead will miss however and having some form of action plan to deal with that in the middle of a meeting would be useful. I reccommend either the most outspoken person speaks up and leads or you give it to the next person in the rotation that would have read the chapter the following week if you have already planned out assignments in advance.

This all being said study groups are useful becasue they expose you to more ideologies then your own. I found that in my time doing stuff with my group I have been able to learn both more about my peers but more about building software itself. The book really only exists in the study group as fuel to ignite discussions with your peers and serve as a backdrop for having exciting converstations about past work or even about future work you want to do. Use the study group as much as you can to help you flesh out your thoughts because when you have an audience of people to talk to about something they are interested enough to read you will find a new idea in the same old lessons. I am so happy I have been able to stay in the group I did after I left my last company. It honestly has helped me out more times then I can truly count because of the pressing topics we discussed. Some might say that the club is only as effective as the book that is read but in reality it really is only as effective as the energy you bring to it. If you ever get the chance to I strongly recommend finding a group of passionate people, whether or work or school or even the library, and start a club yourself.

Thank you and till next time,

Andres Carrera <3