Fun with programming

I’ve been having some fun at work, making tools to automate stuff. I designed a couple of tools majorly in the last few month; one to automate release checks of the printer driver and the other to automate replacing of the driver modules with the debug versions when we have to fix bugs. Few other tools were developed to solve problems then and there, but they are for specialized cases.

I like gaming but it won’t get me anywhere in my life. It’s a great way to have fun – that’s all. However, I don’t expect to stop gaming anytime soon. I’ll just limit it a bit and use that time in a useful manner. Useful in what way? Programming.

I’ll try to develop a tool whenever I come across a specific need. At least I will try to do it. I probably cannot do it right from the beginning. I’m sure there are a million similar tools out there that does the same thing. But it is no fun. I won’t learn anything by just downloading and running tools built by other people. Besides, there is a good chance that they won’t work the way I want.

So I made the first such tool today. It is called Symbolic Link Maker. It is still in beta. There are few things still missing in it, but it does work alright. There are a few things I have to address before I can share it with you guys. I can do that hopefully by tomorrow. I probably can share it even in current state, but first I need to write a user manual. Heck, why not let beta testers find the bugs. :)

Patience is rewarding. ;)