The Learning Experience v1.

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on December 14, 2005 3:34:09 PM

What things are filtering through my brain as I'm developing this bTonga?

Project Timelines
Pen and Paper
Libraries and Documentation

Project Timelines

A very interesting outcome of this experiment, hobby, is that I have learned a significant amount about timeline projections on coding, some of these are simple others maybe I'll have to learn again later.

Essentially, for coding in a new 'environment', this project, some 'truisms' that may hold universal?

Don't make firm projections or estimates of time when you have no track record within the specifics of the coding area for a project. Also known as, if you have no idea of the required direction of codes in creating your widget, forget making projections about how long it will take you to create it. I'm a new programmer to things windowish and I'm revisiting mistakes I made six months ago because it just didn't gel in my brain that this is not the way it is supposed to work. The knowledge of 'how' seems to be significant in this area, as opposed 'what.'
Only project as far out as your level of competence in code fragments, not your presumed knowledge of the environment.

There is more, but my mind is getting a little fuzzy so let's leave the Projections to the side.

Pen and Paper

I've found the most productive part of this small operation has occurred when I'm actually using pen and paper.

The mere action drags the mind away from the code fragment and provides an opportunity to pull back and review the problematic item in a larger context.

The key result of having that item on paper is that it pulls at you as a task list item that needs to be crossed off. There might be heaps of junk sheets of paper around, but as long as their getting 'ticked' off you're progressing further than without having some direction.

I suppose in large development environments this is more formalised into items and to do lists in electronic form, but for this small operation pen and paper is serving well.

Besides, if I have to deal with anything more than 3 pages in length, I am not likely to get to any of them. Whittle down the 3 pages to zero or one and then make more pages.

Libraries and Documentation

Libraries, sample codes, documentation are a danger and source of inspiration. The danger is that you end up spending all your time in the search for the perfect library that you don't get any meaningful code out, but they can launch you in directions you never thought you could get your code.

Principally one of the reasons I love Python is the well documented plethora of libraries that it has, and their consistent approach to maintaining/upgrading the quality of the libraries with each incremental release of the product.

For what I'm doing, I love the Dot Net Framework, there are bits that I wish were better documented or bits I wish they could just write for me, but as I learn more of the library I am learning to add more features into bTonga without the pain of having to write huge amounts of code.

The Language, The Library, The Extensions defines a programmer's vocabulary and as the Philosophers would say, your vocabulary defines the world you live and create. Extend your vocabulary by delving more into those code fragments/libraries you can use.

Unfortunately, modern programming environments/needs require a significant amount of discipline to discern what language/library facilities exist and how they associate to the problem at hand. Maybe if people would write my programs life would be easier.