Tag: geek

After weeks of blood, sweat and tears, I have finally deployed the refactored version of PRIDE to the production servers. This probably means Sweet Fanny Adams to most of you, but this makes me happy because it means that I can finally stop writing test cases and doing pain-in-the-ass fiddly stuff with raw SQL database dumps.

Phil and I have been working on cleaning up the PRIDE codebase. It's long overdue for a good overhauling because as we've been doing this exercise, we've found a cubic assload of code whose only apparent purpose is to be tested (meaning that it's only used in the unit tests, but nowhere else in actual production code and as such, is completely useless, really).

So for the last few weeks, I've been combing through 191 java classes (35562 lines of code), pruning out bits of junk, improving code structure and usability and generally going nuts.

It's tedious work because as soon as you fix something in one place, you need to cascade the changes to everywhere else that uses the bit of code you just re-wrote. It's the worst type of IT work: one that is boring as hell but requires a lot of concentration to figure out what stuff you wrote 6 months ago (or worse, was written by somebody else) is supposed to be doing and how it should use the improvements you're making as you go along.

At least I have the gay dance to keep me sane.

Dear brain.

I'm sorry I put you through the last 2.5 days. Although I'm glad I managed to get a last-minute spot in the java design pattern training course, I didn't expect to see this much material this quickly and I apologize for dumping all this stuff on you at such short notice. I completely understand your sudden desire to shut down to prevent circuit overload. If you can wait just another hour, it's going to be the weekend and we can relax with an assload of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Thank you,
me.