Leveling up despite myself
Jun. 21st, 2007 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progI wrote the most beautiful little Perl program for a client last week, the first small, complete program I've created since reading Perl Best Practices. It performs an analysis of potentially enormous amounts of company data, but it's wicked scalable. The client will be able to keep the program lodged in its cron schedule even if they later find themselves managing millions of user-run content channels (they're just into five digits now). O to the (l to the o-g n), yo.
This is the first time that, faced with a small-scale task, I encouraged myself to think of a way to make it scale better than the most obvious solution. And then implemented and documented this solution in an aesthetically pleasing way. I swear to god I've been logging into their server just to admire my own handiwork. I haven't done this in a long time. Actually I may have never done it with source code, only with my art or prose. This is what that book has given me.
It's most likely that I spend so much time on enormous projects that it's not clear to me how much I've grown as a programmer until I get the chance to use what I've learned in a small space like this.
This is the first time that, faced with a small-scale task, I encouraged myself to think of a way to make it scale better than the most obvious solution. And then implemented and documented this solution in an aesthetically pleasing way. I swear to god I've been logging into their server just to admire my own handiwork. I haven't done this in a long time. Actually I may have never done it with source code, only with my art or prose. This is what that book has given me.
It's most likely that I spend so much time on enormous projects that it's not clear to me how much I've grown as a programmer until I get the chance to use what I've learned in a small space like this.