Spice is now out the door and we’re running through all of the little changes that have to happen whenever you release something. Call me crazy, but this is actually the part I like.
I mean, I’m good at the greenfield design stage, and I do love the flash of creativity. But I much prefer this stage. The final extra-polishing that goes into making a product complete.
It’s pretty satisfying.
I just added some custom scripting to one of the pages at work. I’ve got to say that I’m mighty impressed with how well put together JQuery is. It’s easy to use, and it seems that the abstractions work well for the domain.
And that’s the big thing, really.
I haven’t had to fight against the library once yet. By the time I had finished a few pages with AJAX.Net I had already bashed my head against the wall eight bazillionty times. It just doesn’t match what’s going on in my head.
I’m going to work with JQuery for a while longer before I really make up my mind, but this is feeling like a good fit.
Anyone who’s been wondering what the hell I’ve been doing at work for the last long while can finally find out. Yep, even though we’ve got some cleaning up to do, we’re finally ready for folks to start using the software.
Feel free to sign up for one of the free accounts and let me know what you think. If you find any problems with it, give me a shout and I’ll get them looked at ASAP.
If I could have just one dream come true, it would be to never have to see another “considered harmful” essay again. Not one.
I would have allowed “Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful. But seeing as that’s already been written, I’m just going to consider them finished.
Or at least they should be.
It’s amazing how such a short time can have such a great effect, both on energy and attitude. I’m in a much better place to code from than I have been in the last long while.
I’ve come away from this with a desire to work a lot less. I’ve also decided to get a lot more done. I’m going to stop spinning my wheels, so to speak. Life is far too short to fart away on tasks that do nothing to build us.
Back soon. I’ve got a lot of articles that I want to start publishing. I think that they’ve been stewing for long enough.
Have you ever fought against code for a week or two only to find you’ve been labouring under a mistaken assumption.
Yeah, me too.
For the last season or so I’ve been getting back into emacs. (I’m not going to start a religious war over this or vi. I can see your point, but I still don’t like it.) The text macros alone have saved me countless hours in coding repetetive garbage and I can do it without loading up a ruby script. I love the fact that my hands never have to leave the keyboard. I love the fact that it’s so damn extensible. I love the fact that someone decided to add modules for mud/news/email/web readers.
Not because they’re the right tool for the job, but just because you can write them at all.
In Emacs Lisp.
I’ve also picked up a great book on evolutionary programming. I can’t remember the title right now, but it’s got a crap-load of good information in it. My bio-programming has been centered pretty solidly on genetic algorithms, so this book is really filling in some knowledge gaps.
It’s also written in Lisp.
It seems that I’ve got my yearly language picked out for me.
I’ve been staring at a screen for of ASP.Net code all day. Not the code behind stuff, but the raw semi-HTML markup. Man that stuff is ugly. Eye-crossingly ugly.
Also, the gross mislabeling of the Quick Find feature has not escaped me. Someone was laughing when they put that together.
I’ve begun to realise that I have very little code out where people can see it.
I’ve got a huge folder full of ruby scripts ranging from little one off tools to small DSLs. I’m going to have to look through these to see if there’s anything worth posting. I’ve also got a metric assload of PHP code kicking around. I might have to make up a small snippet library for the.
Or something.
And yes, that damned uninstaller is still going.
The AutomatedQA profiler (QATime) has the slowest damned uninstall I’ve ever had the displeasure of using.
Just sayin’