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 Issue
4
Senior Developer Angie Baxter faces her toughest challenge yet as she leads the
fight against an AS/400 takeover. Will she win? Only with some help from her friends...
Monday
You’ve got to stand up for yourself, especially in what is still basically a
man’s world. Six weeks ago I stormed into Mike’s office and told him I was
quitting, as I’d had enough of being chief latrine-shoveller on the Drivers
Allowances project. Since then my prospects have been transformed. Luckily for me, while
I’d been stewing in Southampton the bosses were agreeing a major shift towards
intranet-style client-server architectures. As a result I’m now in the driving seat
with lead-developer responsibility for a new, browser-hosted DA client and - wait for it -
Carl and Denny writing ActiveX controls to my specifications. It’s now obvious that I
should have gone to San Diego, not Carl, and I’m dropping regular reminders to make
sure the same mistake doesn’t happen again. Life, on the whole, is sweet.
Tuesday
It’s amazing what some lead-developer responsibility does for your confidence. At
this morning’s project meeting I tell Kevin there’s no way I’m having Sammy
dumped on me, even if it is just for writing the fill-in HTML. To my surprise Kevin
agrees, and dumps him on Carl and Denny instead. They’re livid, and stick a sign
reading ‘A. Baxter, Intranet DOMinatrix’ (a pun, it seems, on ‘Document
Object Model’) over my desk. I think about sticking a ‘Sad Old Legacy
Has-Beens’ one over theirs but settle instead for telling Carl that if he’d paid
more attention in San Diego then he might be writing the interesting stuff instead of the
smokestack code. C++ is a spent force, long live Dynamic HTML!
Wednesday
Panic. We’re under attack from Brian Wood who has put in a late counter-bid for an
AS/400-powered DA back-end with a dumbed-down cross-platform browser strategy that would
reduce my clients to little more than data collection terminals. It’s been a trap all
along, and we’ve walked straight into it with our support for an intranet solution.
At Mike’s emergency meeting Denny shows a serious side I hadn’t seen before,
saying that attack is our best defence and that we should demonstrate the maximum possible
number of DHTML-specific features at the project review on Friday. Just 24 hours ago
I’d have assumed he was trying to drop me in it, but all rivalries are forgotten now
as we work together to dream up quickly-implementable, must-have client side goodies.
We’re fighting as a team, and it’s really quite thrilling.
Thursday
It’s 10pm and Carl, Denny, Kevin and I are still here giving the DA super-client
prototype its final checks. Even Sammy, bless him, has stayed on, keeping well out of the
way and fetching us pizzas. We’re hampered by the fact that the NT back-end still
isn’t complete (something the AS/400 lot are doubtless banking on), but it is only a
demo after all, so we’ve scaffolded it with some Access queries and it looks fine.
I’m shattered, but it’s been a great couple of days, and the others have been
fantastic to work with. The best part has been the way they’ve trusted my judgement
over which features to go for, even though they haven’t always understood my reasons
- a mark of professional respect that means more to me than a dozen pay rises (well,
almost). I’ve gained a lot from this, whatever happens tomorrow.
Friday
As long as I live, I’ll never forget that project review meeting. Completely
terrified, I do the actual demo. Brian Wood looks smug at first, but things change as,
feature by feature, Mike asks him whether his dumb clients can do the same. By the end
it’s a massacre, with Bill Hammond telling Brian to think hard before wasting his
time like that again. Back in the office I’m the heroine and the DOMinatrix sign is
replaced by one reading ‘Angie, Queen of the Desktop’. Everyone heads for the
pub and a real celebration, but I’ve got someone to see first. Liam, twinkly-eyed as
ever, says it was nothing, but I know he stuck his neck out by telling me where the
thin-client weak spots were. He’s wonderful, but after a few drinks I forget about
him and enjoy the new-found camaraderie of the mighty Desktop Team instead.
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Issue 4 - Contents
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Angie >
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Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6
Issue 7
Issue 8
Issue 9
Issue 10
Issue 11
Issue 12
Issue 13
Issue 14
Issue 15
Issue 16
Issue 17
Issue 18
Issue 19
Issue 20
Issue 21
Issue 22
Issue 23
Issue 24
Issue 25
Issue 26
Issue 27
Issue 28
Issue 29
Issue 30
Issue 31
Issue 32
Issue 33
Issue 34
Issue 35
Issue 36
Issue 37
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