Code for fun

I was building a thing and at v0.06 I kinda forgot what I was intending to build. Shit. I was once again in the presence of a project I was going to bail on. I'd write a few comments, make a half-hearted attempt at ear-marking the code as the utmost important thing to get to... when I had more time to think. This led to some internal guilt. Then wondered why I was building it at all? Why do I even bother?

I went back and looked at the iterations of the code and deduced that my intent was to learn.

And this is the basis of my relationship with coding as a hobby. When not for work I code to learn, and indeed I had learned some new bits and pieces while building this thing I may or may not ever finish... or may have never intended to finish. Sometimes just learning what it would take to fully complete the project is enough.

This led to the following mental models of my flow when I code in my free time:

• Mechanic
  • Mastery of the tools that exist.
• Intellectual
  • A deep understanding of the tools that exists.
• Wizard
  • Creating new tools.
• Kiddie
  • I just want to push all the buttons, pull all the levers, and see what they do.

Just for shiggles, here's some dumb shit learning I did and ended up sharing.

• pipper
  • Makes dice dots, also called pips
• set-calculator
  • Calculates weights and plates for 5/3/1 lifting program.
• array-areas
  • Makes shapes in 2D arrays
• array-trails
  • Moves through 2D arrays
• commit-flow
  • Uses commitizen to convert our commit policy into a terminal form

I have many more of these in horrible and outdated shape that I would never bother to share, but these few are reasonable examples of code I took to a good enough point. As in good enough for whatever I needed at the time. They could all be improved in various ways... and I may or may not ever get to those improvements. And I'm okay with that.

"Make dumb shit. Learn." --- Joe Maddalone