Continuing from Tuesday and Wednesday’s focus on contract work for an upcoming deadline, Thursday through Sunday were also all about coding. I got the critical prototype code working late Saturday, and spent Sunday doing some fixes followed by a code review to document what I thought needed improvement.

An interesting side-project did arise out of the week-long coding exercise: a video log of the development process, recorded as I was working through the problem in real time, an accurate reflection of how I think while programming. While it’s a bit embarrassing how slow I am at times and what obvious things I miss, I did find the act of talking to the camera as I coded actually helped me stay focused, far more than I think I could have managed otherwise. There are over 18 hours of footage, a significant portion of the 25 hours total I spent developing the feature, and some day I will go back and be amazed at how smart/how dumb I am on different days.

At this point, I think I can say I’m a fan of streaming my activities and look forward to doing more of it with as many of my activities as possible. My Groundhog Day Resolutions time might be quite limited for the next two months, as I am working on contract through the summer AND will be back in Taiwan for a good chunk of time, but I will figure out a way to bring the schedule back into balance. This is a learning situation, after all! I am feeling very positive about the days ahead!