One full year, 365 days, and I'm finally at the stage to begin posting articles here on Hive. In that year I did not acquire any skill whatsoever as a writer. I'm much more a coder than a writer. It already seems weird I'm not using symbols and exotic key combinations as I author this. Disclaimer aside, here it goes, grammer hammers, context switching and all the atrocities of a coder trying to write ideas into sentences.
Foist, a little background.
A few years ago, I began to notice a new perspective emerge: a genuine need to categorize and organize life's "things". Sticky notes, once the savior of forgetting anything, suddenly haunted me or at least upset me that there wasn't 60 different colors to group various scribbles into topics. Spinning my chair around and there was ever more paper stacks than I remember creating. Armies of boxes. Desk drawers long closed and other hiding spots caught my eye. Curiously, I peek into each stowaway compartment. More papers, receipts, statements, Christmas cards... Christmas Cards??? I saved Christmas cards??? Evidently, my temporary "out of sight, out of mind" "put it here for now" organizational skill techniques seemed like a very bad idea.
Deep breath. Exhale. Staring at previously said boxes and with royale resolve, I proclaimed this time, I'm unearthing ALL these documents, notes, etc, into a system. Yea, a system! That's what I need - a system. Oh, oh, and it will be a ROBUST system. Flexible system! One where finding something of immediate need didn't take a fruitless two day search expedition. Standing atop one previously said box, an epiphany arose: I thusly will scan, store and organize EVERYTHING, wherefore may doth paper exist! Oh yes, I will be the lone example of thee computer actually "saving time".
That wasn't too long ago, exactly one year to be precise. And quite honestly, when I signed up to Hive, I truly thought I was 90% done developing thee efficient organizing program I had toiled over for far too long. Yes indeed, I could unfurl to the world the valor and one shining example of a computer saving someone time. And even better, launch into Hive and start blasting out prose like Lewis Carroll.
But then, something happened right at 90% done. It was a faint whisper, "Beware the 90% done mark, my son... The bugs that await, the styling faux pas..." Quick, to the Inter-ma-net, to figure out what hath this and behold... landscapes of new programming frameworks. React, Nuxt,... Jubjub Bird, Frumious Bandersnatch?? Ominous voices swirled,..."I'll get you my pretty..." One thing was clear, monkeys can fly and success is now defined as three year experience in a two month old programming paradigm -or- the equivalent of one hour of video influencer footage.
Should one ever get so close to accomplishing something programming wise, one MUST always seek "most popular" advice and switch out their entire language and tooling stack, especially while approaching the ever dreaded 90%. 10% is where you want to be... forever.
Battle of the "most popular" won - I ignored everyone... for a year.. heck, I guess all my career, come to think of it. But, I did learn a valuable lesson at 90%, which is: "The last 10% of any project takes 90% of the effort." Ignorance of sage wisdom aside, I decided, 10% done, 90% done, who cares. There must be more to life's solutions than SQL scripts. And sure enough, there was: JavaScript! Heh, heh, kidding. Ok, ok, seriously, I think it would be nice to write some prose, share a thought. Maybe one other person out there would relate. And here I am.
Enough philosophical backgrounding. Context Switch Time, yay! Here's a few small recaps of my journey so far in developing this elusive, time saving, organize it all, power-super-viral-app.
I knew from past experiences, computer folders and desktops edge to edge with icons, was proving less and less efficient the more paperless one goes. Obviously, but jotting this idea down for my next career as Influencer. No folders, no desktop, hence (pronounced: 'hence'), a specialized app was the ticket to organization nirvana. And... the app needs to store data locally, offline, no cloud storage. Better yet, no proprietary solutions. Wait, wait, wait... and as much open source as possible! Trumpets, I hear trumpets! This is BRILLIANT!!
"If you're going to do it, you might as well do it right." Along with the adage, "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, how will you ever have time to do it over?" Ah, those lovely revelation moments that fuel the excitement that this time I'll do it all, do it perfectly right, and then have so much time left over. It'll be worth it! Yay!!!... ummm, yea... totally underestimated the length of road to that glorious Nth Degree subdivision. And, had I took two seconds to ponder, I would realize a code editor would soon become my new friend bitch.
So, development begins. Woot! One app. No more: go here do this, go there do that. Information at my fingertips! Mmmm, sweetness awaits. Then the water got deeper, waves higher and... whup, I know... a newer, faster computer is all I ever needed! Dang. Nope. Accounting, Tax Calculations, Calendars, they all despise programmers, no matter the Giga-Ma-Hertz I blew up it's ass. Time to fess up (tail betwixt legs)... no wait!! I can become ADAMANT! That's it! If I'm adamant enough and demand everyone online to fix my code... THEN and only then, could I pound my chest and confidently proclaim which operating system is best and which programming language is the only one for beginners. And adamant I became. Capital Gain / Loss, you will not beat me down!
It got ridiculous for a long time... 36 hours a day coding. Walking to CEO speeches for vision, cross country, no shoes, uphill, both ways, weekly. My one secret that saved the day: 1980s Inspirational Posters.. you really should try them. I "Hung In There". Sure, I tried the online demand for fixes, starting with my first comment response of "Cool" and got banned. Had I read the Terms and Conditions I might have been ok, but silly me, forgot to prepend all sentences and utterances with "Python".
It was a full year steeped into logic, layout and bug fixes, before I began to savor bits of efficiencies. Now I sit here and wish I had been digitally meticulous much sooner. Younger me was under the impression that "when works slows down" or "when I retire" there would be this one or two year reprieve to finally attack all those organizational wishlist items. I could afford to lounge back and watch 'Eat, Pray, Love'... ahem, oops, I mean, all episodes of Star Track with Captain Stubing. Anyway, I'm 0.00001% done, and damn proud of it.
Just kidding
Is it done? Oh heck no. It only has 294 "apps" in it. It's Feature Creep City, woo hoo! Ever Expanding Universe, hooray! PLUS... spaghetti code all the way, baby. Testing? Who does that? Best Practices... not here! Mega-Worst Practices truly is the only way to go. And there's so much more to obfuscate. Can you really over-obfuscate? I don't think so..
I showcased my app around... to my cats. And, I'm asked all the time, "NthTV... it takes meow SO much effort to click Follow. In return, what can I expect going forward to justify moving my index paw 1/16th of an inch to click?" Me looking back puzzled, as if being asked a rhetorical question, "Duhhh... World Peace or course."
