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The New Job

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Over the past few weeks people have been consistently asking my three questions:

  • How’s married life?
  • How are you enjoying not travelling to London?
  • How’s the new job?

    Married life is wonderful. Charlotte is the most amazing person you could hope to meet (but then that’s why I married her!). I haven’t missed the commute down to London or working in London once, although I do miss working at Canary Wharf sometimes. Coming home to the same bed every night is the biggest benefit and I’m gradually clawing back al the sleep I’ve lost over the last couple of years.

    The new job is working out very well, although I’ve only been there a couple of weeks. I’m working with a great bunch of people who are relaxed and keen to work.

    I know my boss reads my blog posts, so I won’t mention that I’m enjoying working with him, find him very reasonable or that he did more than any other manager I’ve ever had has ever done to make sure I feel comfortable, welcome and have a proper grounding in the domain of the business.

    The only real surprise I’ve had is that I was expecting this to be a .Net based role and we discovered halfway through some training last week that it is actually far more likely to be a Java based role. Those of you I’ve talked programming with in the past will know that I’ve never been a fan of Java. I’ve never been comfortable with the non-deterministic delete characteristics of garbage collection or the way the GUIs look. My perception of Java has always been that it’s very slow. So I’ve never really seen the point of Java next to the power of C++ and now that C# is widely adopted.

    I was wrong. At least about the GUI and performance. One of the tools we are using is written in Java and had I not been told I never would have guessed. The GUI looks native and is as responsive as an application written in C# or C++.

    I now find that I am relishing the challenge of using and learning Java. It is yet another important skill to add to my bow, but it does of course mean I’ll owe Russel Winder a lot of alcohol for all the abuse I’ve given him and Java over the years.

    I’m already getting to grips with Eclipse and have rewritten my DirectoryTraverser in Java.

    The new year looks like it will be a lot of hard, but rewarding work and I’m really looking forward to it.

    • Comments

    1. James Duez28 December 2007 at 11:13

      Happy New Year Paul... I look forward to the challenges 2008 will bring us all. Best wishes.

      ReplyDelete

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