Programming feedback

[Shadow]

I now remember one of the reasons why most people probably wouldn't like programming. There are many periods of time where you have nothing really visible to show as progress. This can be really bad when you have a boss that doesn't understand how programming works.

When I started the Mac port, I made (well XCode really made it) a little app that just created a small window that did nothing except you could move it around, resize it, and close it. I then spent the next couple weeks adding in Depths of Peril code and all I saw was lots of errors and warnings from the compiler and then lots of startup crashes mostly because none of the mac specific code was programmed yet.

But finally I fixed all of the errors, warnings, and crashes and I now had a small window that you could move around, resize, and close. So from a visible standpoint after 2 weeks I was exactly back where I started. Now in reality I had made a ton of progress, there just wasn't any visible feedback to back that up. This is probably even frustrating for many programmers, but you pretty much have to get used to it.

Of course, the opposite thing happened once I got through those 2 weeks. It seemed like every couple hours I had another system on the Mac running: mouse, keyboard, graphics, sound, etc. This part is always the fun part, but you can't get there if you can't get through that first hard part.

[ShaggyMoose]

Its even better when you are working a back end system that from a visibility point of view, does absolutely nothing.

[Delve]

It's all about properly defining your deliverables.

[Draal]

Even better is spending 3 weeks replacing the file system on a major project, touching pretty much every file in the project. And then on Friday morning of the 3rd week you find the 1 case that makes changing to the new file system completely impossible because of an OS limitation. I'm not sure what was better un-checking out 200 some files, or explaining to my manager that everything I had done the last 3 weeks had to be completely thrown out. I went home at 10am that day.

[Delve]

What OS was that?

[Draal]

Windows 3.1, it was running out of file handles. There was a hard limit of 15 open file handles (irregardless of what you set your FILES= in config.sys).

[Delve]

Of course. I'm glad I don't have to look at 3.1 again. As much as I dislike Windows, there have been improvements.

[ShaggyMoose]

I am so glad I only started serious programming after Windows 3.1 was dead and buried, where it belongs.