Where Duffy and his sidekick Privet are introduced to the reader and Matt White gets Dissed
"Are you sure this is a good idea Privet?" Duffy asked, peering at the screen
Privet laughed at the concern in his friend's voice. "It'll be fine, Duffy. It's a very simple xPages App. I won't mess it up."
"I don't know," Duffy said, unconvinced. "I'm just not sure you should be using fancy coding tricks to spice up your life." He thought for a moment, then chuckled. "I'm still not used to the idea that you *have* a life, come to think of it."
Privet gave him a glare and stuck his tongue out playfully. "You're just jealous cos I am tall and you are a short and look like a smurf"
The comment made Duffy think of Paul Mooney
Privet noticed, and dropped the grimoire He'd been reading on him desk. "Oh, Duffy, I'm sorry! I should have thought before I said anything."
He reached down and patted Duffy on the baldy bit on the top of his head.
"It's okay, Priv," Duffy assured him, dodging the patting which was really quite hard and rather unpleasant. "I'll be okay. It's just hard, y'know?"
"I know it is," Privet said. "I don't even want to think of how I would cope if an ILUG session crowd turned THAT nasty on me, and all because you mentioned Share....."
"SHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Don't even mention it! It was bad enuff for me but what about Bill?" Duffy exclaimed,
"What about him?" Privet replied, confused.
"I don't think they ever managed to remove that QUICKR memory stick!" Duffy said
Privet whinced at the memory and started to reply, and Duffy cut him off...
"You never spend any time with the debugger any more. You're always cracking code with no error trapping ... Commando Coding..." Duffy shook his head "Pretty soon you will be appearing in your OWN worst practices session at lotusfear!"
"That's not true!" Privet said, stung by Duffy's words. Duffy gave him a look, and he went on,
"Okay, I guess I am It's just... weird , Duffy. I've coded in LS since I was a young coder, but since xPages came along I feel like .... I don't even know LS coding anymore."
"And why do you think that is?" Duffy asked.
"I don't know," Privet said. Duffy gave him another look, and he sighed. "Okay, I do know. It's Matt White. Everything's been different since I took his xPages 101 session at IamLUG."
“Ah HA!” Exclaimed Duffy … “You HAVE been more than dabbling in the dark arts then?”
"I have not!" Privet cried.
"Yes, you have, Privet. .. i am sure I saw you muttering “Repeateo Controlleoamus the other day!"
Privet thought for a moment, then looked down at the keyboard, unable to meet Duffy's eyes.
"arse,...." He answered in a very small voice.
Duffy nodded. "Yeah," He said, softly. "arse indeed, Priv. You are nibbling away at the dark side's cookies and soon you will have NO time for Lotuscript and you will code nothing but xPages”
Privet shivered, remembering the undead double variable that had caused so much trouble with the POS application. "That was the last time.. honestly!"
"It had better be!" Duffy said. "because you know the next stage is a quick slide into CSS and then it will all be over!” Privet's head snapped up, and Duffy reassured him, "That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's natural for you to want to play with new things. But you can't forget the old, the Old Ways are important, too."
"Yeah," Privet agreed. "I know." He looked into Duffy's eyes. "Did Steve ask you to talk to me about this?"
Duffy smiled. "Yeah," He admitted. "He is an old fart but Steve and Bob B are the Arch prelates of the Old Ways and while they won't admit it, but they are worried about you"
Privet smiled back "I do miss the joy of DIM s as NEW NotesSession ... Okay, then. I'll throw a few LS Libraries together , I promise, and I will put them on OpenNTF too.”
"Good," Duffy said, climbing onto a handy box of Lotus 4.5 installation diskettes to shake Privet's hand. "Very good."
Releasing his friend, he asked, "Now, are you sure you want to do this code?"
Privet replied. "Oh, yeah, I'm sure."
"Do I want to know what it does?" Privet looked heavenwards, after a second Duffy went on, "That's a no, then. Just be careful, Privet. and no playing with the live servers or Eileen with have your guts for garters?"
"What do you mean?" Privet asked.
"ITIL Protection, that's what I mean. You'll make sure you're safe, right?"
"Of course, Duffy! I, uh, I did “Change Management for Careless Devs 101” only last week. I even stayed awake the WHOLE way through! And I always use... you know...", Privet Blushed Deeply, "Lots of logging" his voice trailled off , embarrassed.
"Good," Duffy said, relieved. "And on that note, I'm outta time. I'd wish you luck, but I don't want to get that involved, and I have a bus to catch"
Privet laughed. "I don't blame you. I'll see you tomorrow, then."
"Good," Duffy said. Then he waved and left Privet alone with his code.
Privet smiled after him friend, then went back to sorting arrays using arcance and deviant tricks.
