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October 20, 2005
Todd is a Geek (Number 14,973 of an Infinite Series)
Today at work I enjoyed possibly the most entertaining twenty minutes of my professional career.
I had been given an outline for some code that needed to be written, and I was diligently filling in the gaps, when two people higher up the design chain began discussing my assignment.
The point of contention was this: One person believed that a particular section of code should be an "interface" and the other thought it should be a "class". I eventually chimed in, voting for "abstract class", as a compromise.
Soon the conversation moved into my cube, and a forth developer jumped in.
The difference between an interface and a class is pretty big, but in this instance the point was pretty subtle. Almost academic. But the point was argued fervently nonetheless. Personal biases were exposed, windows were opened into each person's coding habits and priorities.
Particularly from my position -- an office newb -- it's relatively easy to get into the habit of keeping your head down, pounding out functional code without even knowing where in the 200,000 lines of code your neighbors are working. It was nice to have an opinion about something work related, and to have that opinion challenged.
Also, the "there's no reason for this to be an interface" faction won out.
Add that to it being Thai day, and the fact that I got to write my first generic class, and it was a good day.
Posted by todd at October 20, 2005 7:14 PM
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