Staring at your own code
Does it also happen to you that, after spending hours, days or even weeks developing on a piece of code, that once finished you are very satisfied with, you sit in front of it for hours, staring at it, just thinking how extremely beautiful all that is? It’s almost as if you are hypnotized by your own code.
As i (as most programmers) rarely am satisfied with my own code (it can always be better), this doesn’t happen very often, but today it hit me again.
The problem: It prevents me from moving on. Staring at code isn’t very productive. I have deadlines. I might even still find something that i could tweak so that my code gets even more beautiful. Oh boy..
The solution: I have to force myself to close all open windows in my IDE. Start a fresh session. And don’t open those pesky files anymore, at least for a while. It’s good enough, period. Now make that other code beautiful!
April 6th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Oh, sometimes I find myself at the same boat. And when you connect all the dots in a fancy and optimized manner is way better than when a puzzle or riddle fanatic solve his challenges…the need and will to solve our computable problems trough programming drains all our attention to that and nothing else matters, because for us programming is an art, nothing more, nothing less.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I believe the admiring of the code is a part of the process. Of course we all have to find that point beyond which making it more beautiful is counterproductive. But I find that for the most part beauty is clarity, and you can be struck at any time with a better way to express your meaning, not just for the compiler but for your future self who may need to read it after the infatuation has faded.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:53 am
I don’t know, I spend more time staring at someone elses code examples, wondering how I am going to even come close to making my idea work as well as the examples.