August 29, 2000

An OI implementation, coding standards, Just Working

Getting ready to roll out a website based on OpenInteract, the first public one. It's fairly limited -- lots of static pages, news, polls and all the user/group stuff. Nothing too complicated, so it should be a good test.

Finally (!) started writing up a document that outlines some coding standards for our company. (Since I'm the "senior" programmer, it's both my responsibility and my perogative.) Not done yet, but I think I set out some good guidelines. You don't want to make people feel like big brother is watching and mandating that everything be this plain-vanilla way. But you also want things to be consistent, and there's also a little of the NIH syndrome (just a wee bit). And there's the additional baggage of perl's rep as a write-only language and the fact that most folks we hire will likely come from a C/Java/C++ background where things like StudlyCaps are the norm.

My wife's grandmother is staying with us for a few days. She's fun to hang out with, and it's nice to have someone (besides the cats) around during the day, to eat lunch with and shoot the breeze.

After working at home for so long, I wonder if I'll ever be able to (or want to) work in a "real office" again?

It's a nice feeling when you build something, think of something new to do with it, make the small change and it just works. The feeling of just works is something I associate strongly with open source programs, and by having something of mine exhibit the same behavior I feel like I'm doing something right.

(Originally posted elsewhere)

Next: SPOPS rulesets
Previous: How do people use Win9x?