Wandering

I finished my 4 days of training today. I look back at how I used to think using a map iterator was clever, and how I now have some ability to create controller objects, and it’s nice. And I think it will be really cool to work in a really TDD fashion.

The process was a bit weird, though I guess mostly the format. There is actually a big room on the first floor which is equipped with projectors and filled with those seats with folding half desks. You know, the ones from college or maybe high school. I thought, it’s been a long time since I ever sat in such a chair, but I suppose it’s a nice place for the laptop since it’s somewhat of a workshop format too.

But it was kinda weird the way everyone sat. There was never more than a dozen of us, but I was the only one to ever sit in the front row. Even the second row only had one person. I don’t know; maybe it’s just me but I was pretty eager to learn a lot of the stuff. Maybe everyone else already knew?

Beyond that there were occasional moments where the instructor would ask a question. One of those times where the answer is somewhat clearly on display and the question is practically rhetorical. Of course, the instructor still wanted an answer, possibly just to see if we’re paying attention, but folks almost never spoke up. Maybe we all didn’t want to spoil the answer? Anyway today there were finally some interesting questions that people actually gave wrong answers.

Overall I’m pretty excited to put it all to use. Before work ended today I stood up (that’s how we do meeting most of the time) with a coworker and went over some model/controller changes we’ll be working on. I’m pretty happy with how well everything made sense to me.

Also today, somebody made a joke today about how continuous integration is often anything but. “Discontinuous everywhere, like Cantor” I heard. The same coworker came over to chat a bit. I made some remark about how Cantor isn’t discontinuous everywhere (neither the Cantor function nor its inverse) and we peacefully disagreed. As he was leaving I mentioned that I was gonna look it up and double check. I wasn’t surprised to see that I was right, mostly because I’d made the exact same mistake myself about 12 years ago.

I felt bad anyway. I mean, I’m supposed to be super nice and all. I do believe there’s something to be said for correcting people when they’re just plain wrong, but I also understand how things can look if you don’t know someone very well. Thankfully, he came by later to concede, and I told him I hoped he didn’t think I was a total ass. It was all cool, and as it turns out he’s somewhat of a math nerd too. I asked him if he tended to favor discrete or calculus (somewhat of a dumb question for a software engineer really) and he gave a very cool answer talking about algebra and even mentioning Galois. So in the end it was actually pretty nice.