Who Am I?

** Updated 26/3/2010 **

If you read this blog regularly then you will know that I'm about to embark on a career change. Part of this will be moving from a relatively safe environment where I have a reputation (Melbourne) to a challenging environment where I'm a relative unknown (London). When I meet new people in London (professionally) I'd like to have something I can point people to that gives them some background and helps to set their expectations. I'm personally expecting to be meeting quite a few new people, and I hope that this can accelerate the familiarisation step a bit.

First, I'm incredibly introverted. I've learned to be vocal in some situations, but sometimes that confuses things because people don't notice just how introverted I really am. How does that manifest?

• I'm pretty quiet in meetings
  
  
  Particularly if I don't know all the participants I tend to listen more than I speak. That doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about the matter, or that I'm not interested, it just means that I'm not talking :-)



• I think slowly
  
  
  Sometimes experience gives me intuitive leaps, but I'm often the person who comes back the next day and says "that thing we talked about yesterday isn't going to work, and here's why". Even when my intuition gives me the right answer quickly it can still take me a while to come up with an explanation. When this happens it's not that I'm being uncooperative and trying to work outside the meeting/collaboration, it just means it look me a while to get to where I was going



• I understand pairing gives better development results, but it doesn't come naturally to me



• I'm unlikely to join you at the pub for a beer
  
  
  It doesn't mean I don't like you, but it's not an environment that suits me.



• I'm not into public celebrations
  
  
  This can get me into trouble, especially when I'm meant to be "leading". It's not that I'm opposed to celebration, it's that it's not something that I volunteer for. If you happen to suggest my team needs one I'm likely to agree and ask you to arrange it!



• I don't deal well with conflict, particularly if it happens quickly


I'm pretty analytical, but emotions can be a bit tricky for me. I need to gear myself up for situations where there might be conflict, and if one springs upon me unexpectedly I'll usually disengage. It's nothing clinical (empathising comes fairly easily to me), but it is something I've learned about myself.

I've managed to add a few layers to this introverted foundation. I'm a reasonable public speaker, I generally enjoy it, and I'm happy to talk about software development to any group that's interested.

I've been referred to as a "code quality freak". My attitude is that you should work on the micro-level details of programming until they've become muscle memory, so that you can free your brain up to work on the complicated stuff. This covers all the stuff you'd find in coding style guides and books like Bob Martin's Clean Code (though I have to fess up that I haven't read that yet). Even at the micro-level I like to use tools to tell me where I've let me standards slip, so I'm keen on tools like Simian, Checkstyle, Complexian and their equivalents in other languages. These days I'm also interested in visualisation of the output of these tools, though I don't have as much experience in that area.

Another metaphor I use around code quality is that it's like hygiene in a hospital - we shouldn't need to talk about it, we should just do it. If we can't maintain hygiene then everything else is going to get a lot, lot harder. Some people suggest that you can clean up your technical debt by having dedicated iterations - to me this is like suggested we let crap pile up around a hospital and clean up every couple of weeks. It doesn't work for me.

I love automation. I have a very small brain and I'd rather use it for processing than storage. Manual processes are slow, tedious and error prone - I want to get rid of them.

I don't think that software development is predominantly a technical problem, I think that in most cases it's a social problem - how to we organise the people and technology we have to delivery an effective solution as cheaply as possible. Commercial constraints demand creativity and make software development challenging.

I like agile practices and processes, but they are means to ends. I think that as humans we are all imperfect - we should accept that we make mistakes, but try to reduce the consequences of our mistakes and try not to make the same ones over and over again. We can continually improve, but to do that we need to continually reflect and continually learn. I'm very keen on the ideas emerging around expertise and deliberate practice.

I'm sure I'll think of more and extend this post, but there's a start :-)