You're Hired!
It had always been my intention to start a blog immediately after starting so I could document all the things I was learning. It would serve as a pick me up if I ever felt like I wasn't making progress. I could always look back at my blog and say "Look, an artifact of progress!"
Slow progress has not been the problem.
During my first two weeks new technologies I have learned what currently feels like an absurd number of new things. Aspects of a new language, a source control program, a diff tool, a SQL implementation, a wiki editor, a jQuery plugin, and bug reporting software were comparatively easy additions. Over half a dozen new passwords threaten to overtake my memorization abilities. I can remember the passwords themselves, but matching the service to the password is sometimes tedious. Server (and employee) names also escape me frequently.
What takes up the most time is sifting through tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of lines of (new to me) code. Figuring out how it all interconnects, in software dialects I haven't read before, is the true challenge. Like filling out a crossword puzzle in Sanskrit, making sense of all these pieces is a puzzle only for the most determined or foolhardy. Luckily I've been guided by the existing development staff, but even among them some of the code is a mystery. Signposts have been worn away by the passage of time and additional development, deprecated code lays in the repository like snow drifts filling a mountain pass.
That said I still think I can get some use out of this blog and I hope you can too. In my future posts I might explain how.