Perl-ing my way..

Well, time to talk about my work..


I wasnt given anything too relevant to my job title. Instead was just shown around the lab and left myself to rot there. I thought why not I spend this time usefully rather than facebooking and twittering ? 


I picked up a Perl reference book and started perl-ing my way in. This was my first time learning a programming language myself, without any guidance. 


I was also tasked to write a programme to automatically plot graphs using data from excel. Some literature reviews later, I copied and modified several excel macros to do just that. Some help were offered at some forums which I am grateful because without them, the macro wouldnt be possible. It was written in VB where I had just 3 months of experience, 4 years back. Dont they consider my programming background before giving my such a task ? 


It wasnt an easy one too. At least for me. 


The data ranges were dynamically expanding. I initially had to come up with some counting algorithm to detect the data ranges. Okay fine. Then he wanted some enhancements to the program. It will allow the user to select the data ranges that are to be plotted. See ? thats where the dynamically counting algorithm becomes redundant. If the data range is to be user-selected, then whats the point of counting the data ranges ? I left this aside for the time being.


Im given another task that uses perl. I had to mount a drive inside UNIX. Wow.... Big headache... It has to be completed next Friday. Wish me luck.....