Yet Another Thing to Add to the List

I've been toying with the idea for a program for the last year or so. It's a simple database of project attributes for work. At work it seems like twice a day that one of us asks the other, "hey, what was the last project where you did xyz?" where xyz might be formed concrete foundations, or load bearing masonry, or window washer supports, or metal siding, or...well you get the idea.

We deal with a great number of projects, but we have no way of tracking what those projects involved. So we are constantly racking our brains trying to remember when we did something so that we can use the details again. So I think a simple database would be of use. Of course, I like programming, so I intend to write something to achieve this, rather than just try and find some other software to do it for me. What fun is that?? So I was brainstorming about how to do the interface and had a general question that I posted to Usenet. On person emailed me a response suggesting that using Python (I intended on using C++) might be much more productive.

So now I've started on the road to learning Python. It seems the place to start is python.org and I quickly downloaded ActivePython to get my feet wet. We will see how it goes. I will likely intermittently post some progress reports on how I am finding it. I have always dealt with C, or C++ and I have quickly looked at Perl as well. So we'll see how python goes. Nice to find something new to learn, although my plate is overflowing as it is...