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Write Code Every Day

ejohn.org

151–160 of 221 posts

Re: Write Code Every Day

#151
I totally agree with this. About a month ago I created a site that puts up a new programming or logic puzzle every day Monday-Friday. The exercises usually take no more than 30min and the community has been steadily growing. If you're interested you can check it out at http://problemotd.com/

Re: Write Code Every Day

#152
post #68

I was onboard with this school of thought for a while, right now it isn't my flow. I work hard as-is teaching WDI at GA. I commit code frequently, but I also really want to focus more on work-life balance at the expense of getting more done. This summer, I'm taking two months off to do Burning Man and travel the country via motorcycle. During that time I expect no code to be committed. Do I feel bad about that at all…

You have a great outlook! Without exercise and getting out I get so depressed.

Re: Write Code Every Day

#153
post #76
post #68

I was onboard with this school of thought for a while, right now it isn't my flow. I work hard as-is teaching WDI at GA. I commit code frequently, but I also really want to focus more on work-life balance at the expense of getting more done. This summer, I'm taking two months off to do Burning Man and travel the country via motorcycle. During that time I expect no code to be committed. Do I feel bad about that at all…

Hey David! It's been too long :) I agree with your sentiment -- I've been through long periods of little-to-no side project hacking. Like multi-year, long. I've been working on my current side projects for over two years now but I finally made the decision last fall to make the hard decision: either this is going to be something that I REALLY want to get out there (and thus, I need to work really hard to make it happ…

You're absolutely right in that its critical to either kick things into gear, or know that its going to take a long time for things to happen. That's excellent focus. I look forward to shifting back to the other side at some point. Maybe in 2015 ;)

Re: Write Code Every Day

#154
I'm curious if 30 minutes is the lower bound on meaningful project time if the constraint of writing code is lifted. I've been thinking about what kinds of projects could be decomposed into 20 minute work units, allowing some work units to basically be all thinking (design, specs, figuring out how to split up a problem, etc.) and others to be more coding.

I'm suspicious that there are many projects that could be decomposed like this, or even into 10 minute blocks, but that it'd be really helpful to have tools that makes this more achievable -- ones that basically remind you of where you were and help with the what-do-I-do-next decision.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of development process?

Re: Write Code Every Day

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The book is written in markdown, so it should be fairly straightforward to eBook-ify it. I put my "toolchain" to do this up on GitHub, which really is just a Makefile that feeds things to Pandoc: https://github.com/steveklabnik/words

Thank you! I'll take a look at this when I start digging into the mechanics of the conversion.

No problem. One quick thing I learned: pandoc is sooooooo much better for this than anything else. I was originally using Calibre to generate stuff, and their epubs don't follow the spec, and so don't work correctly in some readers. I was _this close_ to writing a Ruby script that would unzip, s/foo//g, rezip it back up, before I found pandoc.

Re: Write Code Every Day

#156

That was a beautiful post. Currently I'm in the complete opposite modus operandi. I don't do a lick of side-project work during the week, and on weekends I take a modafinil(wakefullness promoting medication) and stay up nights on end to crack out as much as I can. I get an INSANE amount done on the weekends that I have the energy to pull this off, but it's horrible for my health. The rest of the week I have anxiety a…

That seems very dangerous. This "insane" amount if stuff being done, does it really matter?

Re: Write Code Every Day

#158
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[HabitRPG]( http://habitrpg.com ) is totally awesome for this, a great motivator. You can setup "Dailies" so that when you're done writing your daily 500 words, you just check it off. Or set it up as a habit and give yourself a "+" whenever you get a new chapter done. I use it all the time for just these purposes.

This is brilliant. Thanks! Are there any other similar apps out there?

Daily Badge would do the trick. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mhillsyste...

Re: Write Code Every Day

#159
I've read multiple articles on people doing this. Practice is the best way to learn. Admittedly, I've tried and failed on this before. I love seeing people succeed and become better at their practice using this method. It can only serve as inspiration for others. Thanks and congrats!
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