I was doing some work last week with tropo, the cloud communications platform.
To start myself off, I did a quick IVR app – “Welcome to X, please press 1 for y….” etc.
That took a couple of days to get working properly. Literally, this is 5 lines of code with the Tropo C# API. And it took days.
But I got there in the end.
Then, the current screencast series is progressing well. I was reviewing things and it does seem that its getting a little slow and tedious. Episode 6, hopefully out tomorrow, may well be the most tedious.
But it struck me that there was something in common with both projects. Both are going slowly, tackling problems one step at a time.
In contrast, there are other projects of mine that promised loads, but never went anywhere. like my WHS2Smumug add-in. there reason was simple – I tried to do too much too quickly.
Thats somewhat the trouble with being a software developer. They say that genius is like lightening across the brain. And when I get an idea, I tend to see the whole thing, the entire feature set. I see all the plumbing required to get these things working, and before I know it, I’m immersed in a thousand and one technical details about standard and formats and API’s – to paraphrase the Big Bang Theory, its chaos in my head.
But because I tend to do that too often, I bite off more than I can chew.
This screencast series has really slowed down the pace of development, forcing me to consider issues and problems one episode at a time. In a sense, I’m taking small bites and chewing them thoroughly.
Like writers and musicians, software developers need to find their own style, their own rhythm. I guess I’m still finding mine.
Random Musings 