A couple of days ago I got a chance to be part of something amazing. I am working as a programmer for almost three year and I never been a part of something like that.
The story goes like this. As part of a new project that me and my team just started, we checking some tools and programs that we can get help of to manage faster development. In fact, one of our departments has an application that they have developed a while ago which almost completely covers one part of our project. So we ask them to come and install their application for us that we could check it.
The installation was compounded from two parts:
1) Installing an application's scheme of SDE – which is ESRI's answer for geo database.
2) Installing the application on one of out PCs, including some special configurations.
Although this is sound like common installation for every, or almost every, application, it is important for me to notes that our departments work in completely different environments almost without partnership; in fact this was one of the very few projects that those two departments took part in, and it's a great achievement for our company for its self.
My job in this story was to accompany the installation process and learn about it.
The other department sent a programmer and a DBA to handle the job. After couple of hours of standard installation drill the application, and it's all components, were installed. The DB was created including the necessary scheme. And we all site there and say our prayers that the application will work. But as you probably know it's never work for the first time… and apparently for us it didn’t for the second and the third also.
After a while and some tries in different directions we got a conclusion that there is a problem with some part of the code. But because the installation, as it should be, included only the dll's, without the source code, it was impossible to run a debugging process and see what is going on down there.
As I saw that they have some debugging issues, and because programming is our field, my team leader, Shani, and myself immediately run to help.
With some help of the Reflector we managed to take out the suspicious code and try to run it in deferent solution, after a while we discovered the problem, which by the way was a problem with the user mane that we taking from the active directory. After that it's all was working.
So you probably asking yourself "what was so amazing in this process... its sound like programmer common day". Don’t you?
So I tell you. During this process I learned about security and programming patterns. About advantages of the operations system that can be easily used which I had no idea about them. Also I learned about some cool tools that make my work easier and my applications stronger. But the most important thing that I learned from that event is that a huge amount of knowledge was lying under my nose and I didn't even have idea. And did I mention all this was in one day?
So I had a real great experience working like some kind of per programming with my colleague fellows and my conclusion to you is always look for a way to improve your work and yourself from your surrounded circle - friends, workmate, family or just cool dudes that you met in the local bar.
Take care.