My Apprenticeship - Friday, July 9, 2004

This summer I'm revisiting my short apprenticeship at Object Mentor. I'll be posting commentary on all my posts from the summer of 2004 exactly 5 years later to the day.

Friday 7-9-04

Revision: the State Map Compiler C Sharp version isn't done. It doesn't actually work, as Micah showed us. I feel pretty bad about it because we should have tried the things he tried before showing it to him. The SMCC# produces code that's meant to be part of a larger program. We really should have written the larger program to make sure it works. Bad apprentices. Bad!

On the positive side, I'm becoming a lot more familiar with how this SMC thing functions as we plow through it again (and again, and again). After looking at some UML with Micah we decided to re-design how the C# version of the SMC is written to avoid using inner classes. Which is good because they were confusing me.

David and Paul have suggested that they start writing an 'Anti-Jake' blog. Treachery! We shall speak of them no more.

Tonight I'm going to a ChAD meeting (Chicago area Agile Developers). It's starting at 6:30 at the Loop-area DePaul campus, but my train doesn't arrive until 6:25. So I've got 5 minutes to get off the train, unfold my bike, and peddle my ass on over to Jackson and Wabash.

Last night I bought my airplane tickets to XPAU (eXtreme Programming Agile Universe) which is being held in Calgary this year. I'm pretty excited about going ' should be a great chance to learn a bunch and maybe meet somebody who will offer me a job. (stop laughing -- it could happen). The crazy part is that I have to be back to start my teaching gig the morning after the conference ends. At 8:30pm Calgary time, I get on a flight to Las Vegas, NV. Somewhere around midnight I get on another plane which takes me to Chicago. Arriving at 4:30am. Yipes! I guess I'll sleep a few hours at the airport and take a cab to school. The alternative is taking the 'El back to my home in Chicago, and then getting in my car almost immediately (gotta beat that traffic) to go back to school. That first day is gonna be a little bit crazy. Luckily, it's only a day of meetings -- no teaching required.

Yeah, you should probably run the code before you declare it done. "But all the tests pass" is not an excuse. In fact, it's an insult to your test suite.

XPAU is now just called 'Agile.' I'm speaking at Agile 2009 in August in Chicago, it's going to be weird going back there after all these years as a presenter.

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