Joined ThoughtWorks

So what have I been up to since May?

Well, most importantly, I’ve moved jobs. I now work as a consultant for ThoughtWorks. It’s really great working for a company that gets it and being surrounded by terrifyingly smart developers.

At the moment I’m lurking in a small development team of a large company (one of our clients) implementing best development practices (XP, software configuration management, OO, team-building, automation, testing, etc). It’s certainly challenging and we’ve got a long way to go, but I feel like progress is being made. Unfortunately, for the differences to be noticed it shall take time and people very rarely notice success like that - it’s only when practises start slipping people wonder why things are going bad - the connection is rarely made.

I’m now partaking in a .NET project using C#, ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Crystal Reports. I have to say, I’m really REALLY impressed with .NET. Of course, there’s the initial teeting difficulties you get with any new technology (remember your first J2EE app?) but they are all overcomable. As a Java/J2EE developer I feel I have a significant head-start in building real apps with it over developers from COM/ASP/VB background. I’ll keep the weblog updated with my .NET commentary as things pan out. There shall be laughter, there shall be tears…