During the last weeks my job has been utterly exhausting. I've just started to work for that company, and I had to port a quite complicated and sophisticated Java program to C#. I've done projects in both languages before, I can handle the languages, but I had absolutely no knowledge of the existing code. I mean, it was a completely new project for me, and I had to analyze it entirely to get the idea how it works. But the target device has many restrictions, so only about 20% of the C# language commands were available. A "simple" port wasn't possible. After spending 7 long and exhausting days (my first 7 days at that company), we decided to try a new approach.
We tried to run the Java program on the target device directly. It actually worked, but was ridiculously slow and just useless. No, that's not true. It was beyond useless. Imagine it like that: you hit the break in your car, but your car stops 4 minutes later, and during those 4 minutes you can neither use the steering wheel nor turn off the engine. So they decided to port it to C++.
I payed my bills with programming C++ before I started university, but I can hardly use it anymore. Shame on me! All I wanted to say is that the last days were very exhausting.
But at the start of this week, my boss assigned me a small project in Perl. Did I ever mention that I just love Perl? My friends even say it's my mother tongue, or some call me "the friendly perldoc".
I know that there are many people who hate perl, some say it's too cryptic or too complicated. Some say it's a write-only language (i.e. "you can't read what a program does by looking at its source code"). But, what the hell, it's a great language and I love it, really! If only life was as easy as Perl...
I finished the task in one afternoon, and that day was quite pleasant, and the first feeling of success at that company. After that day I was supposed to go back to C++. But my boss assigned me another tiny Perl task, so another pleasant day...
Yesterday my boss called me and it looks like I can drop the C++ project for now and start in a bigger Perl project. It sounds like heaven to me. My prayers have been heard!
