Matthew

Python and other experiments

Jan 06, 2015

Hello World!

So I've decided to start writing a blog. As with all beginnings, sometimes simply getting started is hard. This post, unimaginatively titled “Hello World!”, is that tricky start, so please excuse the lack of any originality.

First, I must make a confession, this wasn't even my idea! In the autumn of last year, my company started a mentoring scheme. I'm a very new developer, having only been doing web development since June 2014, so the opportunity to learn from an experienced dev was not to be missed. Already a big thank you has to go to Chris, for volunteering his time and wisdom.

After some discussion with Chris about my motivations, we used a simple “five whys” exercise. From Chris' perspective, it helped him really understand the reasoning behind my goals, and from my perspective, it helped me justify my intuition of what I wanted. It's surprising how challenging the exercise can be by the fourth or fifth “why?”

Based on our talk, he suggested that I start a blog.

Day to day, I work with mainly with Python and Django, and while a great deal of what I'm interested in and want to learn fits into my regular work, not all of it can.

This blog is not for just the things that don't fit in my job, but as a way of me recording everything that I'm messing around with. A great deal of learning is achieved by hacking away yourself, but one aspect of learning can be trying to teach others, even through the very indirect means of writing a blog.

On the way, I hope that this might be at least a little informative for the reader, as I publish my ramblings about the things I'm tinkering with!