The biggest challenge of the first week has been adjusting to the hours, after ten years (ten years!) of university life. I’ve been doing something like an internship there already for a couple of months, but an early start two days a week is substantially different from an early start Monday-to-Friday.¹ I’m going to have to force myself to go to bed early on weeknights, against both my and Olga’s inclinations.

Business culture is quite different to research culture. I’m enjoying having concrete short-term goals with solid deadlines. I’m enjoying the effort that goes into setting up a working environment in which it’s possible to (and in which you want to) get things done quickly and efficiently. (There’s a whole literature on management techniques for software development, and while it’s mainly overkill for a team as small as ours I’m personally learning a huge amount just from looking at the problems these techniques are designed to solve.) I’m not so much enjoying feeling that I don’t know yet how to balance these pressures (deadlines, efficiency) against my ideas of software and design quality — at the very least I’m going to have to train myself out of the habit of leisurely exploration and reading-around before reading-about. And it’s turning out to be a real pain that I proofread everything (including code) — definitely a habit to break, that one.

Mainly, though, I’m enjoying being paid to be a programmer. And not just by-the-numbers, we’re small enough that I have to do significant design work too (not unsupervised, of course). And I’m enjoying having to learn fast and hard. (“Don’t know Python? You’ll need to: learn it.”) Takes me back to the best parts of my undergrad degree. (And of course I’m still hoping for a chance to smuggle Haskell somewhere into the codebase…)

Notes:

1. My farming family will laugh at me for “early start”. I mean that I’m at work before 9:30; for them if you’re not up before 6 it’s not really early.

To Dutch students starting out in Artificial Intelligence!

It’s going to be great fun, shaping their innocent beginning-programmer minds. The course is about half Prolog and half AI-as-search; and I’m completely In Charge. (There will be assistents for the lab sessions, we expect about 30-40 students so it’s a bit much for one person to give individual help.)

Anyone who has talked to me in the last six months will know that I’ve been a bit stressed about my prospects after graduation. The job market for programmers is depressed, and for recent philosophy-of-language graduates it’s nonexistent. Not being from the EU makes life even more difficult — indeed, for a while I was worried that I might have to leave the country even before my defence. All those problems look set to evaporate now, at least for another half-year. If I do a good job they might even want me back, who knows?

Thanks everyone who came out, I had a great time. Everyone who didn’t, we’re still doing the Cafe Alto thing every Tuesday, although normally not staying out quite so late. Drop on by!

(Stefan: sorry, but it really is awful. The shorts were better; obviously early work and pretty shaky, but not actively nauseating.)

I’ll be travelling on December 30th and 31st, arriving in Auckland. The plan is to spend a week or ten days making my way down the North Island, calling on friends and relations along the way, and get home to Golden Bay in early January. Two or three weeks at home, then down to Dunedin for a fortnight catching up with the old cosc crowd, particularly with what they’re doing in the language-and-evolution line (this is officially work time, although it’ll be a bit relaxed, being high summer and all). Finally another week or so wandering the South Island, before flying out from Christchurch on February 12th.

Do the numbers of weeks match the dates? I don’t know, I don’t care, I’m going home!

Like I said, Wheeee!

Valentine’s Day can be a minefield of disappointment, so why not hedge your bets this year and love yourself.

They go on to explain that they’ve picked out a selection of music, books, and blockbuster DVDs that are “currently setting their hearts a-flutter,” and seem to be suggesting that I order them for myself.

And yes, they did finish that question with a fullstop in the original.

And yes, I realise that my noticing this confirms all their profiling.

Dammit.

Then I realised that it’s Christmas Eve.

Oops.

Merry Christmas all!

Next week, sofi number for the tax office. Next month, my first full paycheck. Stay tuned…