Back in the Trenches

I thought it might be nice to put down Xcode for a moment and give an update on my progress.

Even though I'm still looking for a job, I've started to feel like I've dived into something important. I've read a bunch of books, but I never had time to actually dive in to my own projects.

When I don’t give a shit: 10,000 line JavaScript controllers. When I do: 150-line modularized Swift classes.

— Nicholas Lash (@NicholasLash) March 30, 2016

I've been working on a small utility for OS X that is the first major personal project in my young career. I'm using the skills that I picked up in my year and a half in the field. Time speeds by as I overcome hurdle after hurdle, poring over documentation and ruthlessly slimming down the code.

I’ve realized that the most minor features aren’t so easy to implement (especially on the first time). For example, it took a hell of a time for me to dynamically create items in the menubar¹, and will take even longer to make a UI that deals with all the edge cases.

Feature requests are the bread-and-butter of development, and I’ll always listen and do my best to make everyone happy, but now I can understand the disfunction between the business and IT departments at my old position. It even got to the point that the developers were wary to make the walk down the hall to talk to the common-folk for fear that the inevitable bombardment of complaints and requests will force them to reconsider the purpose of their lives.²

As I've learned at my own job, a problem I get stuck on one day can be quickly resolved the next day with a fresh mind. With that said, it’s best to make a conservative estimate of the effort and time something takes. In the real world, something that should take 3 months might take more than a year, despite a robust crescendo of pressure and more than a few sleepless nights.

That being said, I love what I do, and I am looking forward to finding a place that shares and appreciates my passion. I followed the advice of a colleague to never settle, especially at my age. I took what I learned, and I'm not looking back.