After more than a year of being “the” person who had the knowledge of how to not only to build out a set of code, but then also integrate its JAR and configuration schtuff into our products, this week hit the ‘automate it’ tipping point. I’m “the” person because I have the right combination of access, knowledge, and just plain commitment to making sure that things happen.  That also makes it too easy for me to just do something, rather than knocking down any of those hurdles for someone else to handle these. That’s not only a risk to me that I’ll be the ‘stuckee’ for this task ongoing, but also of course is a risk to the project. If I’m not around, nothing happens on this tasker.  And because it requires knowledge, if I’m brain-addled for any reason, it’s too easy to make a mistake in configuration.

Enter automation, via an Ant script.  It’s simple, efficient, and lets me set up either a dev/test configuration, or a mechanism bundled up for distribution (e.g., without shipping out server certificates, cert passwords or any remaining log file output).  Spent probably 2 1/2 hours yesterday sum total, and then built out the last piece on my laptop this evening, just finishing out a sleepless night with a quick blip of code to help solve a problem for both me and my team. Integration in this morning, and booyah!  One button integration, which means less time checking/double-checking/triple-checking before shipping out a new capability.  Check the script into configuration management, and implicit knowledge share.  Share out my VM, and knock out another hurdle for access.  And, of course, the next person to touch the script will inevitably find some way they think it should be improved.  All I can say is: “Moose Turd Pie!”  Improve to your heart’s content!   (So long as it still works…)

It’s a sad statement on how much code I get to write from scratch that this gives me such satisfaction.  But a little bit of geek on is a good way to start the day.