First week

Whoa, that was a busy week. I'd forgotten how tiring it can be to have to actively listen and learn all day rather than switching on cruise control at work. So far I'm really enjoying the work and meeting people, though I must say that I'm glad I have a long weekend to recuperate before starting again on Tuesday.

Highlights of the week:

• All developers have dual monitors and desktops
• Being able to head out into the city to pick up some sushi and a chocolate eclair at lunch
• Weekly discussions on development practices with the team; kicking off with a forum on Test Driven Development and Object Oriented class design
• Actually having a wiki filled with documentation to read and contribute to
• Friday drinks followed by table tennis

The team was pretty busy most of the week so I haven't had a chance to really get my hands dirty, though I've poked around in the code where I could. If anything it seems to be the anti Michael Hill as the main container is based in COM but all new modules are written in dotNet and interopped.

At least I've managed to memorise all the members in the MAD team (Maintenance and Development). There are ten of us in total which makes us one of the biggest in a group of four development teams (most of the others have about 8 developers each). Typically, just as I'm finding my feet we get hit with the announcement at the end of the week that our team is about to be split into two smaller teams. Sheesh.

Still early days yet but I'm certainly enjoying the new challenge. I feel like I have quite a bit to learn from the people here.