They say the first thing to go is your memory ...
No, the FIRST thing to go is the sense of time ... a few months? years? What's the difference?
When preparing for a pair programming exercise, it's probably best to pick a language one is familiar with.
I thought I'd be fine with PERL, since the application was very very basic. 5-6 input files + a couple of updates, couple of nested loops for the main processing logic, and done. Besides, lots more people know PERL than know my main specialty language. And I'd be paired with someone who knew it.
I'd forgotten how long it had been since I did anything in PERL. A few months ago, no problem. I should be able to dust off the ol' brain cell responsible for sorting out lists vs scalars quickly, and get to work. I whomped up a quickie script in a couple of hours, sure it had some issues, but nothing major, should be able to clean it up easily and add something else ...
No, in retrospect, AFTER falling flat on my face in front of someone I'd prefer have a positive opinion of me, I counted back and realized ... a few years.
But it was just a few months ago I was coding hot and heavy, before moving to a mostly ad-hoc non-coding phase!
But, no PERL. Because the revolving-door clients didn't allow PERL at all. They didn't want anything written in a language their staff didn't know. Which is a very realistic and understandable request: my job after all is to make their system rock in THEIR terms, not in what I think is cool. They have to support it when I'm out the door. In this particular case the supervisor was so adamant about nothing-in-a-special-language that when she found we were writing our personal ad-hoc testing and analysis scripts in PERL, she had it blocked completely.
So ... it's been a looooong time, and unfortunately, that showed. But, it was very liberating being able to say "I don't know". I'm usually not allowed to not know something. Not Knowing often gets taken by the client to mean "crap we are spending HOW MUCH on contractors who are CLUELESS?!?!?".
With that spectacular failure, on to something I am capable of doing. Roasting coffee, prepping for falconry season, fixing the laptop that I borked trying to install stuff, and laundry. And the fruitless responding to emails by the agency's recruiters who are simply making their contact-count targets for the day* and not actually considering me for anything.
*Glassdoor.com, coupled with taking former recruiters out for drinks, has been very educational. The entire system is broken. But that's a rant for another day.
When preparing for a pair programming exercise, it's probably best to pick a language one is familiar with.
I thought I'd be fine with PERL, since the application was very very basic. 5-6 input files + a couple of updates, couple of nested loops for the main processing logic, and done. Besides, lots more people know PERL than know my main specialty language. And I'd be paired with someone who knew it.
I'd forgotten how long it had been since I did anything in PERL. A few months ago, no problem. I should be able to dust off the ol' brain cell responsible for sorting out lists vs scalars quickly, and get to work. I whomped up a quickie script in a couple of hours, sure it had some issues, but nothing major, should be able to clean it up easily and add something else ...
No, in retrospect, AFTER falling flat on my face in front of someone I'd prefer have a positive opinion of me, I counted back and realized ... a few years.
But it was just a few months ago I was coding hot and heavy, before moving to a mostly ad-hoc non-coding phase!
But, no PERL. Because the revolving-door clients didn't allow PERL at all. They didn't want anything written in a language their staff didn't know. Which is a very realistic and understandable request: my job after all is to make their system rock in THEIR terms, not in what I think is cool. They have to support it when I'm out the door. In this particular case the supervisor was so adamant about nothing-in-a-special-language that when she found we were writing our personal ad-hoc testing and analysis scripts in PERL, she had it blocked completely.
So ... it's been a looooong time, and unfortunately, that showed. But, it was very liberating being able to say "I don't know". I'm usually not allowed to not know something. Not Knowing often gets taken by the client to mean "crap we are spending HOW MUCH on contractors who are CLUELESS?!?!?".
With that spectacular failure, on to something I am capable of doing. Roasting coffee, prepping for falconry season, fixing the laptop that I borked trying to install stuff, and laundry. And the fruitless responding to emails by the agency's recruiters who are simply making their contact-count targets for the day* and not actually considering me for anything.
*Glassdoor.com, coupled with taking former recruiters out for drinks, has been very educational. The entire system is broken. But that's a rant for another day.