It’s been a while since I said anything about work. It’s not for lack of activity, or of interest – work is as busy as ever, and I am really enjoying it. I guess there just haven’t been any individual events that stand out or prompt a post.

It really is the best job I’ve ever had. Not that the previous ones were bad… With one exception, I’ve felt the same about all my previous jobs at this company: each one was better than the previous one, either more interesting, or more suited to my skills. (The exception was the job that made me leave the firm after 4 months.)

So what is so good about it? The best thing is that I work with other developers. While I spent at least 50% of my time writing code in my last job, I was the only member of the team whose main focus was code. And I was by far the most experienced “developer” in that team – even though I had no comp sci background, I had been coding for several years, whereas the others had done little or none. Also, I was the only one really interested in software development. This meant that I had no one to discuss my projects with. No one to ask, How should I design this? Does this look like a good solution? How could I improve my code? Now, on the other hand, I sit right next to people who are interested in software development, know a lot about it, and are willing to discuss it. Design decisions, small and large, are discussed before, during and after coding. As a result, I am learning more, doing a better job, and enjoying the process a lot more.

Working in a team imposes its restrictions on me, and most of the time, that is a good thing. Too much freedom can easily become lack of direction – a certain amount of discipline and control actually make life easier. When I was the only developer – either in my previous job, or in my hobby projects – I could more or less do anything. Now I need technical specifications and documentation and class diagrams, and maybe time estimates and prototypes. I need to make design decisions upfront and can no longer change my mind whenever I feel like it, because other people’s work depends on what I do, and what I have said I will do, and what I have said I will need from them. I’ve sometimes found this hard and unnatural: my preference is generally leave my choices open, to start working and let the details emerge as needed. But on the whole I think this has led to better-quality work.

The other great advantage of working in a technical department is the sheer breadth of experience to be gained. I used to work with Excel VBA at work, and VB6 ⁄ VB.NET at home. Then SAS was added to my toolbox at work, and that was a major decision for the group and a major change for me. Now I’m regularly reading and/or writing bits and pieces of Java, C#, VB.Net, and SQL, interleaved with command scripts, VBA, XML schemas, and proprietary languages, plus support tools like source control systems, class diagrams, change management systems etc. While I can’t call myself an expert in any of these, even just having exposure to such a broad array of technologies is both fun and educational.

I’ve been in this job for four months now, but it feels a lot longer than that, because of how much I’ve learned. I am looking back at projects I did a year or two ago and can’t help thinking that I could do them so much better now.

Puffin © Ian Lyons

Cormorant nest

One of the most enjoyable things we did in Iceland was a “nature-watching” cruise around the coast and small islands of Breiðafjörður.

While the inlands are largely empty, the coasts of Iceland are very much alive. The large bay of Breiðafjörður in north-west Iceland is said to be one of the most bird-rich areas in Europe. It has shallow mud flats with lots of food, as well as thousands of islands and islets and a long coastline, offering good nesting grounds. I’m sure the lack of human activity helps as well.

Iceland’s most eye-catching bird is definitely the puffin, Fratercula arctica. And they really do look just as odd in real life as they do in photos. What the photos don’t tell you – although the birds’ body shape is a hint – is how unsuited puffins are to flying. They somehow seemed like mutant penguins who were good swimmers, and had now barely learned the art of flight. They need a good-sized runway to take off, as they trot along the ground or the water and frantically flap their wings to get airborne. Once in the air they look like chubby barrels with wings attached.

Around 3 million pairs of puffins breed in Iceland every year. That’s six million breeding birds! They live in colonies; we mostly saw them on small grassy islets that they had taken over more or less completely, to the exclusion of other birds.

Other common birds from the auk family were black guillemots (Cepphus grylle), shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis) and cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo). We mostly saw guillemots on the water, fishing, while shags and cormorants were easier to spot in flight or on the nest.

The species we saw most of was the fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis). They are called “storm birds” in both Swedish and Estonian (stormfågel, jää-tormilind) and I found that very fitting. At first glance they appear similar to gulls, but when you look closer, they have a more raptor-like build, straighter wings, and they move differently in flight. Unlike puffins, flight is the natural state of these birds, and we rarely saw them doing anything else. They were quite confident and unafraid of our boat, and flew in very close. Their flight was about as distinctive as that of puffins, but in a different way: very controlled and efficient gliding, utilising the wind, often just above the surface, with only a few occasional beats of the wings.

Nesting kittiwakes

The kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), another gull-like bird, is not called a gull in English, but is considered a gull in both Swedish and Estonian. We mostly saw them nesting, which they did on minuscule ledges on vertical cliff faces. Indeed, their Estonian name is “cliff gull” (kaljukajakas).

Other birds we saw quite a lot of included eiders (Somateria mollissima) and Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea – this one migrates between the Arctic and the Antarctic every year!). Finally, the trip concluded with what was obviously the official highlight: passing by the nest of a pair of white-tailed eagles.

“Little, big” is about a family – the Drinkwaters – who see faeries, and whose fates are somehow linked to the world of faery. It all revolves around the family home, a large mansion somewhere in the countryside. Family members come to the house, leave it and come back again, marry into it and grow up in it. There is a sense that the house and the family are there for a purpose, even though no one really knows what that purpose might be.

It’s widely described as a masterwork and a classic, which led me to expect a lot more than the book had to offer. The language is beautiful – “lyrical” and “poetic” are terms that seem to recur in many reviews. But the author doesn’t seem do much with it. The book felt like it was building up and promising that more would come, but it never delivers. The story just ambles on while nothing much happens, occasionally slowing down further, and then it ends with nothing particularly climactic. Pleasant but unremarkable characters go about their slightly mysterious yet ultimately unremarkable lives. “Pleasant but ultimately unremarkable” is, in fact, quite a good summary of my impressions of this book. It is sort of like a long and fantastic dream… and then you just wake up. Meh.

Much of this lack of action is surely intentional, because this “waiting for something to happen” is exactly what the various Drinkwater family members spend a lot of their time doing. They are aware that their world is a magical place, even if nothing magical happens most of the time. They feel like they are on the edge of something big that can only barely be perceived. But that is in my mind not enough to keep a book going.

While I was reading “Little, Big”, I rather enjoyed it. But looking back, it didn’t leave a particularly strong impression, and even while I was partway through the book, it didn’t feel particularly important that I finish it. One reviewer at Amazon had a very apt comment that explains this:

Because it has no plot, you can open the book anywhere and start reading, set it aside, open it up tomorrow at a different place and it won’t make any difference to your comprehension of the story. No one chapter is contingent on the chapter that precedes it. No one chapter ever really resolves anything.

It’s somewhat tempting to look for reasons why I wasn’t more impressed with what’s so often lauded as a masterpiece. Perhaps I approached the book with the wrong assumptions. I was expecting a fantasy book, but got a meandering family saga. Or perhaps it simply isn’t for all tastes.