Reflection on PyWeek

mgrazebrook on 2016/03/15 22:50 of Wasabi Root
— edited on 2016/03/15 22:56

I learned a lot working with this team.

I've worked for many years as a programmer including several using Python. Normally I'm the best python programmer around - but only because nobody else does much Python! My last job was as a programmer in a forensic accounting team where hardly anyone else could code. I've also little experience of writing games.

Team Wasabi had some very good programmers. Dan has a few PyWeek trophies and wrote pygame zero, others were brilliant but less famous. Sometimes my code was great - and sometimes I needed to re-think my approach to a problem. As I read others' code, I'd be thinking "yes, that's how I'd have done this ... but I didn't know you could do that". For the first time since I read Gamma's "design patterns" book in the mid 90s, I found myself working with people who used them quite naturally in conversation! Normally design patterns are only interview questions!

It was the first time I've used pyglet, trello and google hangouts. At least agile working methods were familiar.

The project scheduling was uncanny .. we had neither too little nor too much time for what we set out to achieve. I'd expected - at best - a last minute panic on Saturday. Instead we were polishing and adding finishing touches such as the credits screen.