Working on a small project means that I wear multiple hats, and that’s helping me grow so much as a developer. Yesterday, I planned some changes to our build process and developed tools to make deployment painless. In a large project, all of this would have been decided already, and all I would need to do would be just to fit into the scheme. Here, I get to weigh the pros and cons, then make things better.

What’s the next step?

If I integrate regression testing into the production deployment script, then we will be one step closer to development nirvana. Another step would be to do daily regression testing, per-checkin tests, or even pre-checkin tests. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

I’m definitely working above my pay grade. ;) That’s because I don’t have to make all the mistakes myself. Working on and watching open source development means that I can see what problems other developers run into and how they’ve solved them, and that’s taught me ways to keep my development environment sane. I’m still going to make mistakes, but at least I can avoid some of them. Kaizen–relentless improvement–means that I’m not only solving problems right now, I’m also working on making things better. As a blogger (and somewhat of a teacher), I not only grow as a developer, but I’m helping other people grow too.