Retrospective: Week Two

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This is the second retrospective in my second chain. The first was more code based (and just getting started), this is shifting the focus to learning. Currently I am learning couchapp, but plan to move on to other technologies as well.

WHAT WENT WELL

• Done with CouchDB 0.10, couchdb-lucene 0.5 (pre-release), and Sinatra 1.0 (pre-release). All tests and Cucumber scenarios passing.
• Figured out my old rack testing issue. I had difficulties stubbing rack application instances last year. That had nagged me ever since. Very happy to finally resolve even if the solution was somewhat obvious.
• An init.d script for the couchdb-lucene server.
• Resolved a slow reducing map-reduce by replacing it with a list function. This was thanks almost entirely to a tip from a concerned reader.
• The Liberation Mono font (9pt) works well on this netbook.

OBSTACLES / THINGS THAT WENT NOT SO WELL

• CouchDB auto-replication. I still do not understand conflict resolution in it.
• Didn't use my pomodoro git branches as effectively as I hoped. Partially because I have been prototyping to learn. When I was coding, I only used 2-3 pomodoros total.
• Hard to document replication issues in a blog. There is much back and forth, screen captures that need to be synced up, and many opportunities to make a mistake that requires redoing many steps.
• As was remarked to me at the @bmoreonrails meetup tonight, I am becoming a bit of a Google sink. Many of the issues that I am facing are similar to issues that I have faced before. There is not much to be done about this—excessing blogging will tend to result in this. This may be an indication that I need to change my thinking more effectively. If I keep approaching problems the same, I am more likely to face difficulties finding effective solutions in the future. Changing my thinking is easier said than done, but perhaps something to keep in the back of my mind.

WHAT I'LL TRY NEXT WEEK

• I plan on prototyping to learn for the next week or so. I need to keep those sessions as self-contained as possible. When blogging, there is a lot of pressure to actually produce something useful. I may need to lower my expectations so as to maintain some kind of sanity.

Day #16