Author Archives: donespe

Life And Other Distractions

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For the next couple of days I will probably be a bit distracted. Some of today is happening because of a change in our nation and a desire to watch history unfold. Part of it is the recent passing of a family member and some of the steps needed to get through that.

But, in spite of that I made a plan to write a blog entry each day, and I plan to follow through. The big question is: “How can I connect this to programming?” Well, I’ll go with the advice of keep making progress, even if it doesn’t feel like much. At least make the attempt to get something done – either learn something, or work on a project. It is pretty rare that there isn’t at least a few minutes each day to focus on making an accomplishment.

So, today might not be a great blog entry, but it is an entry. It is progress toward my goal, and it has a useful point.

Sometimes, Diving into Your Past Can Be Constructive.

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I wrote yesterday about keeping old ideas in a notebook. Well, it’s also useful to take some time out occasionally and page through those old notebooks. It is often interesting seeing how much you have grown over time as your skills and knowledge has expanded. It’s also often useful to see how you solved problems in the past and to possibly use some of those ideas in the future.

The past version of you was far less knowledgeable, but sometimes that lack of knowledge leads you to solutions that seem less obvious once you understand things. It is sometimes those very solutions that are the most interesting and elegant.

Basically, you need to remind yourself that sometimes looking at the world with your earlier naivety will sometimes offer you the perfect solutions. Let yourself view things as you once did and then use your current knowledge and experience to make it work even better.

Don’t Throw Away Things That Are Still Useful

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This has to do with my personal life as much as it does programming. While writing a program we often go through many iterations of what we are creating or how to solve individual issues. While, many of these ideas won’t be used in the final program, it is still worth keeping some record of them.

A couple of ways to do this are to use a notebook to work through your ideas. As you change your ideas or come up with new ideas, simply turn the page and start again. This will allow you to keep your old ideas (ideally with dates written by them), while you explore new ideas or solutions. When the notebook is full simply put it on the shelf and start another. Notebooks don’t take up much space and the are relatively cheap to purchase.

I couldn’t begin to list the times that I have run across old notes and they inspired a solution to a new problem that I was having. The same can be true for you. It just takes a bit of a change in how you do things.