Today (technically yesterday at this point, I suppose) was my ten year anniversary at AG Interactive.
I’m frankly astounded that it’s been so long, so soon.
Once upon a time, there was a 23-year-old version of me, leaving behind the miseries of being an IBM road warrior to sling code for an internet startup with its sights set on an IPO, where lunches were free and the foosball was fast and furious. I was psyched to be able to see both my fianceé and the inside of my apartment on a daily basis. I was a Perl zealot, but willing and curious to learn Python (in spite of my perception that it Just Wasn’t That Great).
Since then I’ve fallen out of love with Perl (she was nuts, man!) and found that Python might in fact be my soul mate of programming languages. We didn’t IPO, the free lunches have long since passed, and I don’t play nearly as much foosball as I used to, but the culture’s still a lot of fun. (At the very least, daily finger missile battles keep us on our toes!) The apartment has been upgraded to a house, the fianceé to wife (that’s another ten year anniversary coming up soon!), and we’ve added cats and a kid to the domestic mix.
All in all, it’s been a decent ten years. I just can’t believe they happened so fast!
python, work
The stars finally aligned in a configuration that allowed me to return to Clepy, our local Python group. It was really nice to see some folks that I hadn’t in forever, including some long-lost ex-AGI people that I hadn’t caught up with in what seemed like forever.
We did tonight’s meeting in the “Teach Me X” format made popular by Steve Holden’s “Teach Me Twisted” open space at Pycon 2009. One of our newer compatriots, Chris Miller, had been hearing a lot of buzz about dependency injection and wanted a deeper exposure to it, so he played the questioner while David Stanek played ringleader to the group discussion. The format was a lot of fun, and a good way to engage the group without having a more straightforward and less-interactive “eyes-forward” Powerpoint extravaganza of death, though the conversation did seem to be dominated by a few voices that had had the most experience with DI in their professional lives. But overall it was good, and I think that at least a few people had lightbulb moments, and I suspect that even us seasoned DI nerds achieved some insights into the subject as well.
I’m eager to try out the “Teach Me…” format at work, where I’ve got some peer education to-dos that I’ve been struggling to figure out how to structure without causing roomfuls of eyes to glaze over.
In other news, Cleveland Give Camp is coming up in July, and they’re eager for all types of participation–so whether you want to help organize the event or want to participate (they’re particularly seeking code-slingers and graphic designers), this looks like a great opportunity to Do Some Good.
Clepy are a nice bunch of smart folks; meetings are held on the first Monday of the month aboard LeanDog’s awesome boat. And now we have an official pizza and beer fund, so we can enjoy a bit of a treat whilst geeking about. If you’re in Cleveland and are interested in Python, it’s definitely worth joining in. I certainly hope to make it a regular part of my extracurricular life again.
clepy, python
This is an experiment to see if Google Buzz (in its infinite wisdom) will stop posting my last blog entry every three hours if I give it something new to chew on, or if I will just have to have a Very Serious Conversation with it or any Google folk who cross my path in the coming days.
*stern look*
rants