Getting back into C++

I have to admit that unit testing in C++, even with google-test, is so much more of a PITA than in python. Especially when checking string output. Simple string matching using split and regular expressions has really spoiled me.

Another thing that I've noticed is that I spend more time thinking about object design, and what should that object really be able to do, and what should it allow others to do to it.

It is an interesting time as I realise how much I still have to learn for our current domain. Most of my previous C++ experience has been on server side processing. Drawing stuff on the screen, real end user stuff, is still relatively new for me.

DX Sprint

What a week. I've spent the last week in Budapest sprinting with the rest of the Desktop Experience (DX) team. This week was also my first official week with the DX team as I have moved now from the Launchpad team to the DX team. This was a good week. I had met some of the DX team before at other company get togethers, but not really talked to them much. A really important part of any new job is meeting the people that you are working with. This is always ends up happening when you work in the same office with them, but for a distributed company like Canonical, you can end up working on the same team with people that you don't get to meet for months.

It was great to meet different sub-teams of DX, especially those that I'll be working closely with. I'll be hanging out in the #ayatana irc channel now, but I'll also still be in #launchpad and #launchpad-dev. There are some very interesting plans for oneiric, and it will be interesting to see how much we can end up getting done. In the normal way we have "too much to do" and the gauntlet has been thrown.

So... I'll be hacking on the unity stack. Please don't ask me to fix any particular bugs yet as it'll no doubt take me time to find my way through the code :-)

Now for the 40+ hour journey home.