Accelerated Learning through Pressure

So my co-worker left 2 weeks ago to have a 3 month journey across Australia. This means that I am now in charge of all the web development/projects for our business. For one developer, the amount of “active” (bugs/todos) projects we have open for one developer at this point in time is quite enormous, leaving me quite overwhelmed at this point in time.

It seems to be the case that if there isn’t a new job that is coming up in the next few days, it’s a client that has found a bug and demands it patched by the end of the business day. The problem with this is that there are lots of technologies that i have yet to deal with where the bugs have arisen; to be more specific, flash websites. Now i’ve got my action script 3 book, and although the book is interesting to some degree, I find the technology somewhat boring. I’ve never been the type of developer to commit to a technology/language that isn’t open source, or admittedly, one that is client side. Alas the technology is in demand, and I am in the position now to learn the language and get these bugs squashed.

The upside to this somewhat short written story is that i am learning an absolute bucket load! I’ve been totally immersed in my co-worker’s excellent code that exhausts almost everything that CakePHP can offer. Learning new techniques, practices and solutions to “uncommon” problems really forces me to analyse and understand code on a whole new level. It now extends beyond looking briefly at a function, putting an array of data into it and seeing what comes out to see exactly what the function can do. So all that is left to do is to cope with the load of the clients barking and new project planning, and come out on top with a deeper understanding of what is to offer with the technologies out there. More news to come.