Workin’ Hard For the Money
These last few weeks have been pretty intense at work. I’ve found my role in the office has drifted almost exclusively to development tasks (which I like), and I have been lately working on a suite of web applications to take care administrivia tasks and provide self-service to users in our department.
This has been an interesting blessing. With the first major task of writing an authentication plugin for TurboGears that uses our ActiveDirectory for authenication/user and group management, I’ve found that I’ve been “forced” to learn more in the last few weeks than I’ve needed to learn on the job in a long time. It’s been a pleasure, but at times it feels almost like I’m studying for a final eight hours a day.
A good portion of this learning process was expected, part of the reason that I selected these projects and designed them the way I did was because of the opportunities for expanding my skillset. However, as layer after layer of abstraction peeled away I found myself learning lots about areas I wasn’t expecting (yet) to attack. From function decorators to disttools, from all of this learning I’m really starting to feel like I’m establishing a strong skillset in Python. And it feels good. I see my code improving constantly, and in very signifcant ways.
Previously expensive algorithms are being replaced with list comprehensions, duplicated logic is becoming completely unduplicated. I don’t know how to describe things concretely, but I’m really having a good time.
But on top of this already hectic learning schedule with Python, I’ve also found myself busy with other concerns at work. I’ve found myself playing the role of “senior systems administrator” a lot lately, and problems both major and minor have needed guidance. Our new systems team guru, Jesse Printz, rocks; I’ve been spending time working with him to assist on whatever’s at the moment with varying degrees of importance. His work on the new support wiki has quintupled the speed of progress on that project to the point that now it’s just waiting on my code!
All things considered, I’ve been working very hard lately. Cranking a solid 40 hours a week and really making those hours count. I suppose that’s quite good for the department, all things considered. And not only could I use the money, I really value the experience developing in Python that I’ve been having.