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Finish your stuff

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Re: Finish your stuff

#41

Post by berntb »

emmelaich wrote: post #11
Kenji wrote: post #7

Slightly OT, but Except for some basic UNIX tools, like grep or make Is make a basic tool? I'm often surprised when I find out new features of make that I was unaware of. I feel like it's bigger than it appears to be.

I consider make a basic tool. So much of programming and administration is about managing dependencies, and make is the default tool. Such a pity it has a shitty syntax.

There is no reason for Make to have a "shitty syntax", since it would be easy to have an alternative syntax -- which make recognized and handled differently. (So make would be backwards compatible.)

With the way software updates percolates out in distros, a new make format could be supported in five years on most every server and desktop everywhere.

I think the reason this haven't happened after decades is because make works. If you want to prove me wrong, read previous paragraphs. If you succeed, I'll buy you a beer. Hell, we should all buy you a beer if you improve our life quality. :-)

(Yeah, I'm hellbanned.)

Re: Finish your stuff

#42

Post by Loque »

pfortuny wrote: post #29

Oh, come on: software is usually much more than a table or a chair. It grows, it needs care, it is more like a plant than something static. What does it even mean to "finish" a program like 'ls' given the increasing complexity of filesystems with time?

I caught myself thinking the same thing, however if you compare software to a physical product the importance of the analogy remains intact.

It may not apply to you however, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by some very well disciplined developers who make a point of finishing a lot of what they start to varying degrees of success.

Re: Finish your stuff

#43

Post by voltagex_ »

wainstead wrote: post #35
voltagex_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider hosting that with remote participants? I'd love to do a *thon like that.

Sure! What kind of "venue" would you suggest? (Lord knows I have plenty of unfinished projects myself!)

If you wanted to make this big you could get a whole lot of hackerspaces to participate. I'd suggest IRC for now.

Re: Finish your stuff

#44

Post by otherusername2 »

mironathetin wrote: post #18

"Lately, after 30 years in the programming business, I've finally managed to cut down my projects to a reasonable size." ... long before those thirty years, someone who thinks he is a great manager may take over the steering wheel (he or she). And things are ready to start from the beginning. Im my group, we have another flavour of not finishing things: managing by whatever is in front of the managers mind and declar…

> managing by whatever is in front of the managers mind and declare it highest priority

Bane of my existence for the longest time. Eventually I learned to just ignore those managers. They're too chaotic to remember whatever I was supposed to work on for them anyway.

Re: Finish your stuff

#45

Post by euphemize »

I like this idea, but I'm not sure it's realistic. Constraints change all the time, just like your users' needs. In principle this works, but I'm not convinced that everything should aim to be finished.

Re: Finish your stuff

#46

Post by benihana »

wainstead wrote: post #27

I thought the Unix philosophy embraced the idea of "small tools that do one thing really well." > Please join me in my effort and do finish your projects. Hear, hear. A friend and I hosted a "Finish it! Weekend" once (as opposed to a "Startup Weekend"). The idea was to get people together for one weekend and finish that last 10% or whatever of a project. Sadly we were the only two to show up. (And we both finished ou…

Love it. I'm stealing this idea.

Re: Finish your stuff

#48

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

gedrap wrote: post #24

In my own experience, I found the following 2 things being the most important: 1) Keep it fun. Sometimes you start working on something and a week later you realize it's not as great as you expected it to be. Maybe you are working on some game and you can see it won't be as fun to play as you thought, etc. It's fine, it's ok to stop working on it. Forcing yourself to work on it won't produce any good. 2) Start with w…

I've found:

1) Usually getting something finished is a boring slog. You get the (you think...) brilliant idea phase when you're all fired up, then you get "this is really boring" phase when you're working your way through a thicket of problems, squashing bugs, finding new bugs, thinking you should refactor (you shouldn't, usually) and completion seems like an ever-receding goal.

2) Break big goals into smaller goals. Repeat recursively until done. Then do it some more, because you missed a few things. Sweat the small stuff, because when you glue it all back together and you've worked through phase 1 properly, the big stuff just works. (Or near offer, anyway.)

Keep the cognitive load low: small microprojects and problems, one at a time.

It's not unusual to have problems with phase 1. But it's also the difference between being a professional and being a hobbyist.

If you just keep starting new projects when you hit phase 1, you don't ship.

Re: Finish your stuff

#49

Post by ams6110 »

Just an aside on the carpenter metaphor, there's sort of a running joke that a carpenter's house is never finished. It's not just the software profession that has this problem.
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