overzealous

So, I think I’ve yet to mention in this blog where I work. This hasn’t been a particularly concious decision, there just wasn’t any need.

Ironic, then, that I mention it now – at a time when I’m not entirely sure!

http://www.amdocs.com/News/Pages/032310.aspx

That’s right kids, MX Telecom – my home for the last four and a half years – has been acquired by Amdocs and is to be merged with OpenMarket.

This is a really exciting time for me. As I juggle both tech and management hats there is going to be a tonne of new stuff to see, learn and experience over the coming months. Definitely exciting times! The first few things to come to mind:

• What changes will managing a team separated by 6 timezones and nearly 5000 miles bring?
• What toolchains do they use? How will they differ to what we do here?
• Where we have similar products, how we will determine which one is better? What metrics will we need? How will we test these? How will we migrate from one to the other?
• OpenMarket are smart guys. So are we. We’ve solved similar problems. How are our approaches different? How are they similar? Why?
• What about culture? Sure, we’ve got a US office, but development has been very UK-centric. How will that change?

Of course, nothing has been decided yet. That list is a list of things going around in my head and not a list of things I’ve been told to think about. As always, the opinions represented here are mine and not my employers.

So one of the questions that comes up time and time again on the Dojo mailing list is how to get a build working.

Like most things Dojo, it’s not that hard, but the system is designed to be flexible enough to fit around your workflow as well as providing the bells and whistles needed to optimise for more advanced use cases. This has a couple of problems:

1. Writing documentation is tricky – it’s hard to get the basics down and cover all the extras in the same document, and
2. there’s a steep learning curve – as a newbie it’s hard to know which knobs to turn, which to ignore, and which to tinker with

Additionally in my experience working examples are easier to understand than written documentation. They allow you to play with the options and convert them incrementally to your project.

So I created a simple example, and added it to the Dojo wiki. You can find it here (new site) or here (old site). Hope it helps!