The Fries

Glyne J. Gittens
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I haven’t forgotten your order.

Trier recommended that if you happened to ask me for a burger, I should make sure to Bring the Fries. From the beginning it was a part of my plan. If you asked me to parse the output from that function, the plan was to give you a couple unit tests to go along with it. If you wanted me to edit the docs a bit, I was ready to strike up a document good enough for an O’Reilly deal.

But, when you asked me to update the conversation metadata, I didn’t run all the tests. I shipped some code for review that I would know didn’t work if I ran the entire suite. I was too busy thinking of a deadline and making all the red lines disappear from the IDE. Next time, I said.

And then you asked me to write a scalding job to manipulate the conversation events that we needed to analyze from hadoop. Somehow I ended up complaining about not being sure if the results from the job would be the same every time it ran. You didn’t answer, just let me talk it through until I realized the answer. Run it again. Next time, I said.

I didn’t ask enough questions.

I spent too much time on that task.

I didn’t explain my thoughts clearly.

I didn’t ask for help soon enough.

Next time…

Next time..

Next time.

I won’t forget your order.

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