Last day! We had to get out of our sprint location at 13:00 so we didn’t get too much done late last evening and this morning. But still:
Found one specific hard-to-solve problem in the installer that hopefully won’t occur all that often. (System-wide installed python packages that we need sometimes result in other system-wide installed packages also ending up on python’s load path even though a different buildout-managed version ought to be used…)
Fixed one of the most important scripts to run with the newer version of networkx (a network/graph analysis library). One part of the code needed 1.2, another version 0.99. Now everything runs happily on 1.2.
Worked a bit more on the big run-everything test.
This is the first time I had a company-internal sprint. I’ve attended 6 or 7 python/plone/grok/django sprints, so community sprints with people from different countries and companies. Now it was a sprint with three colleagues. What do I think of it?
It is great for getting to know your colleagues better. You’ll always remember the sprint when you see them in the office. You’ve seen each other full-time for five days. Cooked for each other, walked in the park together, stayed up till late at night together. I enjoyed it.
You get to know the code. You work on the same code for five days: you know your way around reasonably well after that.
Everyone cooks well.
Working together towards a single goal, on the same code, for a full week is loads of fun. You get a good team spirit by working together in this way!
No interruptions! At the office, people stop by and ask things. Sites blow up and need fixing. When you’re in a small town in the countryside in an unmarked house, you’re harder to find than when you’re sitting behind your desk :-)
The house was big enough so that everyone was far enough from my room that I didn’t get a single complaint about my snoring.
So: company-internal sprints are a good idea!
The house we hired (de kleine weide, B&B Dorpsstraat in Renswoude) was quite good. The number one necessity: good internet connectivity. We had better wireless than at the office :-) Quiet. Nice surroundings for a short after-lunch walk. Couple of tables for putting your laptop on. Kitchen. Only drawback: the pool table and the ping pong table in the garage were of questionable state of repair (but that’s no life necessity). And exactly the week we were there, they were renovating the supermarket in town so we had to drive over to the next town for loot :-)
At 13:00 we knocked off for the day. Beautiful weather, so I hit the bicycle paths again. 95 km (see map for the first 65 km before my iphone battery gave out). Good ending to a good week.
My name is Reinout van Rees and I work a lot with Python (programming language) and Django (website framework). I live in The Netherlands and I'm happily married to Annie van Rees-Kooiman.
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