To be honest, whatever it was you needed me to do, I probably would have a working prototype done in perl before you finished writing that node. ;-)

As far as how you get promoted, it probably was not insignificant that I said something similar to the above to my manager in more than one meeting. "Ok, you want something to work kinda like ... this?" (turns laptop around) Of course, when he asked if I was ready to check it in, my response was "well, I just started it 30 minutes ago - give me a bit to test it, ok?" ;-)