Work

I've started backporting some Perl modules to wheezy-backports - for starters, libbread-board-perl, which is now waiting in BACKPORTS-NEW. At work I've recently been trying to automate the deployment of our platform, and was originally trying to use Carton to manage the CPAN dependencies for us. It seems like it ought to be possible to make this work using CPAN-only tools. However, in practice, I've seen two strong negatives with this approach: it's a lot of work for developers to manage the entire dependency chain, and it takes forever to get the environment running. ...

On Monday, I need to start hiring a Perl programmer - or, at least, a programmer willing to write Perl. I work for a website where people post their CVs, which tends to help - although this will mean that my boss wants me to do it without going through recruiters. Which is fine. I just have to use the search interface that recruiters normally use. And looking through all these CVs, it dawned on me that I don't have a clue whether any of the people are suitable for the job. I have to search for keywords that we think might be relevant - "Perl", I guess - and then sort through the hundreds of people who come back from the search. It's very painful, because you can't really judge a CV without reading it - and even that won't necessarily tell you the important things about that person. Do they actually write good code? Do they work well in a team? ...

Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage. Principles behind the Agile Manifesto After two and a half years at Smoothwall, I'm moving on - Friday is my last day. Since I joined the development team, we have adopted Agile development, set up a pretty nifty Gerrit/Jenkins code review + integration system, and introduced dpkg for package management. Along the way, I helped with a bunch of important features for the business, like a ground-up rewrite of the web filter, and time-based browsing usage quotas. ...

I've been promoted - my job title will now be 'Software Architect'. This seems to mean I'll be writing documents rather than code - any higher-level, and I'd need Mark Shuttleworth's spacesuit. Is this a good thing? Anyway, I celebrated by opening my last bottle of Debian wine. <spam>Unfortunately, I can't take up my new role until we have hired a replacement. UK-based developers who know Perl and ideally PostgreSQL might want to look at the job description, although I'd recommend sending your CV and covering letter to me directly. I don't get a referral bonus, it's just that I don't like what that agency does with your carefully-crafted application.</spam> ...

Today I wore a tie to work, and told everyone it was "dress up Friday". Of course, this has been done before. At lunch most of the office was together at the pub, celebrating a software release. I had an entertaining discussion with the Technical Director about how our next major version should be developed - we disagree. But it seems I've convinced several key people of the merits of basing our work on a third-party distribution, so that looks promising. ...