Sorry for the recent lack of posts, things are hugely busy here at the moment. I’ve had workmen in the house all week fitting a new bathroom. That’s all finished now and a massive improvement with a really nice shower in my ensuite. Much needed as well to try and cool down in this insane heat. For the last few days the temperatures have been in the 30s and now it’s got humid as well. I know that a lot of places get hotter than us but the UK is just not set up to handle this sort of weather, it’s been a great pleasure getting into the office in the morning to appreciate the air conditioning!
The other thing which is on a roll at the moment is one of my own side projects, I’ve been using Dojo to write a new Domino application, it’s a bit of a change in the way you think about web development but I’m really quite impressed. So far I’ve come to the conclusion that for the best integration with Domino is to go with a Web 1.5 type approach!
What does that mean? Well Dojo really pushes you away from any classic interaction with HTML forms and direct contact with the server, however I’ve managed to come up with an application framework within Domino where all the validation etc is done using the classic Input Validation formulae. So using dojo.io.FormBind I can submit the Domino form and then handle the response so that it looks like a Web 2.0 interface (i.e. few screen refreshes, lots of asynchronous activity) but is in fact still using classic Domino web techniques where they are useful.
It’s all a bit of a tease talking about applications and then not giving any details, well this is one of my own personal projects which I’ve been working on in one form or another for a few months now, hopefully it will see the light of day but I’m not going to release something which will embarass me so don’t expect anything too soon. If / when it does come out then you can be sure that I’ll bore the pants off you talking about it then so just be grateful for the moment!
Now, onto something completely different. I guess this is fairly common but I am in the zone at the moment. Most developers know what the zone is, when you have a period where you can truly concentrate and get huge amounts of good work done, probably not even being aware of the passing of time. Well I have two different types of zone, what I just described is a period of a few hours during a day when everything goes well. But I have long periods of time where everything seems to come together and I just get loads of work done. I’ve learned over the years that when I enter one of these periods I have to make the most of it because in this two or three week timeframe I can make real progress on whatever project I concentrate on. I don’t know, maybe this is just me, or does everyone experience this?
It’s not just you, I know what you mean. Like you, I have days when I actually *get stuff done* (they’re becoming rare as I end doing more infrastructure-type stuff
http://www.11tmr.com/11tmr.nsf/emoticons/DLYH-5N3GHL/$FILE/sad.gif“> ) I also have whole weeks that are really productive… I could do with one of those right now for the final push on DominoWiki!
I think it firstly depends on the role. When I was working in a 100% development role I found the concept of the zone very advantageous, giving one a chance to get on with development work and avoiding the support and project office requests with a few peaceful and focused moments.
As my role has drifted more towards a Business Analyst flavour, I am finding myself pulled into meetings more, and at the mercy of managers in a mad panic to obtain the latest documentation, the position of the project, or for some pretty graphs to impress another layer of management. So, no more peaceful moments !
Also, I think the existence and duration of the zone is dependent on the project, and where it’s at. The migration project I am working on has been running for just over a year and a half, but has now reached a busy stage leading up to the conversion date. Development teams have less chances to stay in the zone as they now have to attend to bug fixing as well as finishing features that are behind schedule.
We have instigated 24 hour shifts to get through the work and simulate migration activities in real time. What we are finding is that this shift pattern also encourages a “nightime” zone, where much is acheived in the absence of managerial interruptions and ad-hoc MI requests.