Learning curve
Many people would prefer to bask in comfort as an established expert in their field, with the experience and confidence to prevail in their domain, rather than struggle as a novice in unfamiliar territory. I actually prefer the bracing challenges of being steep on the learning curve.
Not being handy to the open ocean, I don’t really have the ready opportunity to become a very skilled surfer. There is sheltered water nearby, and I spend a lot of time on and around the Straight of Georgia in a sailboat, and have gained a degree of expertise in that domain. However, there is no substitute for the untempered swell of the west coast, so I take a surf trip a couple times a year, to keep in touch with the Pacific’s primal forces.
In the course of a recent three day trip, I was subjected the usual large doses of humility, but at the same time, there were brief flashes of exhilaration, and the genuine satisfaction of achievement – from breaking one’s own barriers – that are unobtainable once one has reached their peak. Sailing is a lot of fun, and I’m certainly still learning, but I get a lot of pleasure from dramatically raising my surfing skills in a single weekend.
The same principle applies at work. The java world is changing rapidly, and there is much work to be done to keep up with the technology. Beyond that, we are maturing as a company, constantly improving our processes and methodology, and we all enjoy the satisfaction of raising our own bar. We are actively using Java 5 as our language of choice, AJAX in our UI, and JPA for database integration needs. In the last couple of months, we’ve revamped our build automation infrastructure with the help of Subversion, Continuum, and Selenium. And keeping up with currently in-vogue agile methodologies, two of our team recently certified as Scrum masters.
With each improvement, we not only enhance our ability to deliver agile, high quality, rapidly developed custom applications, we also reap the tremendous satisfaction of continuous learning and personal achievement.
