Source Control and Frisbee

I've been working at Aten for a couple weeks now, long enough to reflect a bit. Since I started here, I've had a chance to work on a few interesting sites, attended DrupalCamp Colorado, and discovered some good restaurants near the office.

A large part of my initial interest in working at Aten was reading about their (now our) process. In theory, the process sounded great, but it's easy to talk about a good process; more difficult to actually carry it out. I've been pleased to discover we really do take process seriously.

When friends and family have asked me about the new job, I've talked about playing frisbee over lunch, to give them a sense of why I like my job. But when colleagues ask me about it, I tell them about a different kind of lunch, the one we spent using salt and pepper shakers to represent working copies and repositories, to work out better processes around source control.

Few people know what source control is. Fewer still care enough about it to spend an entire lunch on the subject. And most people have no reason to know or care. Done well, source control speeds up development and safeguards against mistakes, but it's one of those behind-the-scenes details that no one ever sees.

It's easy to overlook minor process issues no one ever sees. But people who really care about what they're doing will sweat the details. It's really nice to see my new coworkers at Aten care about what they're doing. And frisbee is nice too.