The Opinionated Programmer

In the last few weeks, I have had a lot of music in my life. I am in a mens choir, and we have had a few small performances in the last few weeks here. (Including another one this evening)

In between my bouts of singing lately, I have been doing some awesome things at work. The huge project that I have been working on for a while has the potential to be done very soon and I know I am not the only one that is happy for this. While working on trying to finish up that project, I have been working on my skills in problem solving. We have been finding other small issues with this program, and have been trying to figure out those interesting solutions because we are trying to get things done. Now, I am not saying that we are copping out and finding the quick fix answers. I am saying that we are running into those issues that normally you say hey, I know how to do this, but this wasn’t something that we thought of at the beginning of the project, but now, you have the majority of the project up and running, how do I implement this without changing the majority of things that have been finished. So, that has been interesting lately.

Also, I have gotten a new, from the void, project which I have been waiting for. I haven’t really had a project that I got to start and finish by myself yet at work, they have all been other projects that people have worked on doing maintenance, or continuing development from where they left off. Well, I shall let you know how that project will be treating me in a few weeks.

As for school, I have my first CS assignment due. It was to implement and mirror a Linux shell for the most part. The project turned out to be quite interesting. We had to demo the project today, and we did pretty well, and were satisfied with our results. That is what has been happening with me the last few weeks.

Tonight, we have a Ruby user group meeting here in Eau Claire. It is a pretty big meeting, as we are trying to get a lot of people there to show them first, what a user group does, and second, the awesomeness of Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Due to this meeting, we are having a few quick speakers, and then lighting talks by other members. I am giving one of these lighting talks.

As of right now, 10ish AM, I still have to decide what I want to talk about. This isn’t due to the fact that I am a slacker, or lazy, this is due to the fact that I have a bunch of things that I want to talk about, and I need to narrow it down. At first, I wanted to show people how quick and easy it is to get a simple project up and running. I don’t think I am going to do this because it has been shown a few times in talks in classes to some of the possible new members. Next, it was suggested that I do a talk about HAML because as you have seen, I have taken a pretty solid look at it. I don’t think I am going to do this because there are so many new people that might be coming to the meeting this evening. So, I think I am going to just talk about what I like about ruby, what I do with it on a daily basis, and why I enjoy using it so much. I think this is a good topic because this way, I can still show enthusiasm while not feel like I am either talking down, or over, someones head. This way I can just talk to them, and explain my experiences with it instead of trying to teach, which can be done at a meeting later, when we know who is interested in what topics.