Ruby

Programming isn’t really engineering This Ruby project has been very enjoyable. I’ve been getting my hands dirty (figuratively) by writing code, thinking hard about things I haven’t thought about in a long time, and re-familiarizing myself with the Ruby language. It’s delightful. In my previous post, I wrote about being the kind of engineer that drives the train - in my career, I’ve spent quite a bit of time being the one who supervises the machines that keep the business running. Physically and digitally stacking together the pieces, plugging them together, and providing the oil and grease in just the right places to guarantee it keeps running until the next shift. In many cases, I’ve been able to automate a lot of this, too - using tools other people had built to compose a system that does what the company needs it to. This is a complex task that requires lots of knowledge on how these components work under the hood. This is what I call “little e engineering.” Driving the train. ...

Wherein the writer learns how to polish mud There’s an arts and crafts thing in Japan and now the rest of the world that started on children’s playgrounds. At some point in the past, kids in Japan raised the traditional mud pie to a high art form - they rolled their mud into balls and figured out that with water, patience, and time, you can polish them bright and shiny. And actually pretty. It’s called dorodango - literally mud dumpling. ...