Despite it's name, Coderetreat is intense.

You spend the day focused on a single problem (often a single aspect of the problem) for 8 full hours to the exclusion of everything else. You code with many different people throughout the day. On top of all that, you're asked to perform various contorted exercises in order to learn how to write better code. Your assumptions are challenged. Your prior beliefs about code put in question. You learn new techniques and…

It was 3:30pm on Friday afternoon, and I was heading out of work for my daily drive back home. I slipped behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, put the car into gear, and then...sat there.  Because it wasn't just any Friday. In just a few hours, the first Coderetreats of the Global Day of Coderetreat would start.

Before I could start my drive, I thought about what was going to happen. At about 5:00pm my time on…