Welcome to the beginning of a journey

Hello there,

Welcome to my humble blog.

Let's start a journey to better ourselves.

This blog is finally set up and now it is online if you can see this post. Which indicates that I have succeeded in finishing this project, no longer procrastinating and pushing it for a later date or the continuous working to it to complete it in an endless cycle of improvements and fixes.

Then these questions start to roll:

• What defines the completion of a project (public release criteria)?
• Where is the ready for release line?
• And when does it cross the line?
• many other questions for the many things in between...

It is amazing how many people start these projects and then fall into one or both pitfalls. They end up staying caught in an infinite loop which can end up stopping their progress to a halt as they stay in that loop. Staying in a cycle long enough with no progress will most likely lead to the end of that development and thus killing off that project.

I am also one of those people, I went through the same process in the making of many projects in my life (Which never saw the light of the day) and this blog was about to be another victim. While on my journey to create this blog, there were many what-ifs, comparisons and I guess one of the hardest questions: "what can I do?".

Once you have passed that stage, now you are moving toward revealing your Great project to the world. But before all else, you must work on setting up your platform(s) and somethings need time to process and those little gaps somehow have a great potential to turn to the longest summer holidays.

How happy would my child-self be with how long these breaks become? Don't think he would be that happy with just a couple weeks off but as an adult that is long.

Welcome back

Once you are back from your little holiday, it is time to start working on the next stage of the project (Yay progress!). In my experience after a long break I start working on my project with high level of enthusiasm, a bit too high it sometimes turns into an obsession, because I have so many ideas to add in and try, but I find myself still not satisfied because again the feeling that the state of completion has not been reached is usually back. And the questions start to roll again and again. Guess what it makes you want to do now? Yep, it convinces you to procrastinate using "gaining answers to these questions" as a valid reason. A loop is now created, once you repeat this couple times you will burn out and feel like that field/language/skill is not right for you. Mostly due to the lack of progress and the draining loop.

Breaking the loop!

The best way to deal with it is to follow the most basic rule to never fall into the "is it perfect?" and the perfection trap. Not everyone though, but for many people they will be stuck saying "still working on it, it is not complete yet, so I need to finish it". How many times did you hear that similar line? A better question to you: how many times were you guilty of it?

I am guilty of it as well, I made many projects that never saw the light of the day as I labelled them imperfect and unfinished for public display standards. Yet my first successful project was released as a prototype and was developed along the way with the feedback from hundreds of users. It was just as I learned Java with a week to 2 weeks of experience. What made it different was the fact It was made to fit the needs of many of the users and gave them the experience they wished for but lacked the skills to turn it a reality.

I learned one important fact while working on that project, the implementation of new features to your project may take around 2 hours on average but one small error without an error message will give you hell for 8 hours+. So, to all the newbies out, there be ready for that "find the "error" ride" and don't be like me, at least use the print debugging. Dealing with bugs is a normal part of being a developer but back then with my few weeks of experience I thought I was a terrible programmer for taking so many hours to fix a single bug, but it was just inexperience and not utilizing the available tools and communities.

"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought"

by Brian Kernighan

Someone replied that quote to me because most of my "errors" were from invalid conditions which made the program skip if statements and loops which led to sudden stops. So, I started to put in more time in visualizing the functions/methods which helped lower my encounters with those errors. Just thank you to that person and I shall pay it forward, it might help someone out there :)

The Version 1.0 goals:

Let us just set some rules or goals to stop us from the "gotta finish it" procrastination. For that these should be our “it is ready” rules:

• The basic functions work
• There is an interactive UI
• UI is user-friendly
• No crashes or errors

Once you have these 4 ticked out, just release it to the public and ask for feedback to improve it. In later versions, you can make it more efficient and work on the add-ons and the customization settings. one last thing I noticed that as people have more experience they tend to overcomplicate things and forget that sometimes simple projects can become much more useful to the user.

There are two good benefits you will usually experience from a public release. First, the feeling of accomplishment and seeing your project on public display. The second one (might hurt) is the criticism (focus on the constructive and ask them how to make it better) which you are going to use to fix those issues and make it into the "great thing it is meant to be". Otherwise, if you can't then just keep those improvements for your next project.

I will just leave you with this quote: "Hiding until it is perfect is a fool's game" by Simon Sinek. It is much better to share the journey of the development and your experience while you gain feedback from the community which is a beneficial win-win situation. I would like to embark on this sharing journey and you are welcome to join me. Remember to continue your output, my friend. I am also on the same journey, making similar mistakes and learning so much every day because the moment I stop I will fall hard and the higher you are the harder you will fall (^_^)