Today I deployed my first piece of working code to a real production system

August 2016 · 5 minute read

Today I deployed my first piece of working code to a real production system and to be honest I thought it’d be bigger deal but erm, turns out that’s just part of my job 😕

The client’s happy, the boss is happy, the code is readable, what more is there to say?

Ok, you got me. It is a big deal! I contributed to some code that is currently out there on the world wide web making someone’s life a little easier and it feels great knowing that it’s all working and that some of the code is absolutely beautiful. At the same time, it’s kind of also sad that no one is going to see it…

Just over a month in and I’ve realised what I’ve been told numerous times. The best (and really, only) way to learn how to code is to literally do it all day, every day. When you work in development, you’re essentially forced to sit and stare at the code whether you want to or not, with or without help for 8hrs a day – And when there’s a project to work on, there’s only so much social media procrastinating that can be done before you just have to go back and work it out.

I’m so happy that the company is willing to invest some serious time into my progress. They seem to see the benefit from the company perspective as well as my own personal development point of view. This makes my job all that much more rewarding, I’m surprisingly still managing to make it on time to work every day, it must come down to doing a job that I genuinely enjoy!

And with that, good news! My project has now been extended so I can work more on it and learn as much as possible, so now, of course, I’m re-writing some of it!

Only one guy in the office seems to enjoy writing SQL queries, I can’t understand why, though. They can be extremely complex but those queries are fascinating. I got my first taste today of Stored Procedures and you know what? I think my life has just been changed! They’re so cool, they make the application code base so clean and I think I might just focus some more time on learning the ins and outs of SQL statements.

The JOINs started out quite confusing but after seeing them in action and with some understanding of the database structure, the patterns are becoming clearer. I think I could probably go and even write some complex queries of my own after all this…

Writing the query is one thing, getting the code based to talk to it another thing. And when it takes you two hours to work out that you should have returned $result_array() instead of $result() haha! Ohhh, it wasn’t funny at the time…

Nothing beats the feeling of finally nailing that little niggly line or two (or underscore and word) that you’ve been confused as fuck about for half of the day. It’s immediately followed by “What the fuck?”, “Of course…”, an abrupt removal of the glasses and stand up, and a very frustrated walk away from the desk because I cannot handle this right now as everyone else in the near vicinity casts a rather confused and slightly shocked glance in my direction.

I thought I kept that one under control… It’s a weird feeling, like a combination of satisfaction, frustration and just plain out “How dumb can you be?” and apparently satisfaction is not the emotion that shines through!

Upon returning to my desk, it’s much easier to see that I’m finally getting what it is that I need to keep going forward to so it is a lot easier to just soldier on. I like coming into something that’s working. And I’m so glad there’s opportunity for a break away from the screen in and around my office. If it all gets too much, a short walk, a coffee break, lunch on the balcony in the sun or in the lounge, a game of pinball or even just a little nosey at someone else’s screen seems to do the trick.

Now’s where it gets harder, though. After successfully getting one part to work, I’m feeling more confident about the rest of the code and starting to see what should not be in there. Not only what should not be in there, but also what could? be better.

Working on that one stored procedure back there has just opened me up an entire can of worms… At the end of it all, I know this going to be worth it but right now. It’s broken. It’s all broken! The refactor I’m about to undertake is essentially going to end up being a rewrite of almost the entire system.

Looks like I figured out why it didn’t seem like such a big deal before…

I’m not going to lie, this is going to take time. A lot of time. But I can just remember that feeling of my first major code refactor and how good it was when I finally finished and had everything working perfectly!

If all goes according to plan, I am about to remove literally thousands of lines of unnecessary code and with no set time frame as yet, I’m excited to see the finished product soon become a reality.