See? Sharp.

For those of you who require a formal statement, I have begun the new phase of my career at Intuit Canada.

During my interview, they asked a lot of questions, testing my knowledge. Most of the questions asked by Adwin, the Senior Software Engineer, were based around C++ (as Quicken has always been programmed in C and C++ and the QSG [Quicken Solutions Group] has been a C++-centric group). I figured that the main reason I’d gotten the job was because of my fairly-extensive knowledge of C++.

Except I’m the only Engineer in Edmonton who isn’t working in C++.

It turns out that the driving force behind my being hired is that I have shown (through work experience and through my references) that I am not afraid to speak up when I have concerns and they felt that that would be a very valuable asset to have as a remote member of a development team.

So I’m using C#, leaning very heavily on concepts I’ve never really looked at like Events and Delegates. It’s going to be a harrowing couple of weeks, getting up to speed on these things. When I do, things will all be well (until they throw the next challenge at me, anyway!)

On the reading front, things are going slowly, but still relatively on target for the 50 books goal.

I’ve finished (but haven’t had time to write about): The Horse and his Boy, Nighttime Parenting, and The Subtle Knife. That gives me 14 books read through today. I have a month and a week to finish three books to be on track (though my goal #1 list has expanded out of control – there are now a whopping 23 books! I’m going to have to revise this list to allow for reality, and for the fact that I’m reading two software design books (they have already been added to the list but they’re taking precedence over all the other books right now. )

They’re Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides; and Code Complete by Steve McConnell. So far, they’re very high-level and have a lot to do with design intent, laying groundwork and avoiding just jumping into the code in order to avoid redoing a bunch of work.

Very interesting stuff.

36 books to go!