Saturday 29 September 2007

Protocol Therapy

An entrepreneur is required to wear many hats. In my case that can be anything from reviewing operational performance, developing new marketing channels, discussing finances with the rest of the board, to even sometimes sales.

For me this is part of the appeal of what I do. I'm better at starting things than I am at finishing so moving between different demands on my time keeps my work fresh and exciting. Though like everyone, I have to make sure there aren't too many plates spinning.

Recently however, I've been making a bit more time for the technician in me and doing some development. I've been investigating various services and protocols, building test systems to assess their potential to be offered as new services for our clients.

I've discovered that I find protocol implementation quite therapeutic. Give me an RFC, Visual Studio and a copy of NUnit and I can zone out for several hours.

Unit testing was made for this kind of development. I get lost in the mesmeric cycle of

  1. Identify requirement in RFC
  2. Write test for requirement
  3. Write code to make test pass
  4. repeat

The outcome is a robust implementation that meets the spec. as well as a general sense of well being.

Obviously I have to ration this kind of therapy, I have got a company to run, but it shows that relaxation can be found in the most unlikely of places as entirely personal.

To find mine, I just had to embrace my inner geek.

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