https://keasigmadelta.com/blog/

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Well said!

@Spectre660

100% true

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@Hans

Keep on Hans. You are one of the best developer around

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@thread

Self imposed deadlines create a sense of focus and show that you are diligent and take pride in your work and this ultimately will yield positive results.

A lesson for all of us regardless of which industry you work in.

Good video and motivating speech Hans

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Well spoken Hans!

Keep up the good work.

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@Spectre660

interesting ;)

the problem is with hobby projects and no chance to earn money (typical for amiga) that there is not enough external pressure to get something out in time

@OlafS25


Self discipline is useful.
Sometimes things learned while doing the hobby projects can be applied on some income generating projects.
I find it fascinating to follow the threads on Amigans.net were developers reach out to each others for vital tips when they have a block.


Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @Spectre660 interesting ;) the problem is with hobby projects and no chance to earn money (typical for amiga) that there is not enough external pressure to get something out in time

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@OlafS25

If you start anything, and you have in your life the main idea that you need to finish all that you start, be it much pleasure, or not, or for money, or for fun, then its pleasure by itself when a thing is done. Sure sometimes things go wrong, but the priority should be "if something started, it should be finished".

More finished things made the mind clear and open it for new stuff. With each thing you finish, you feel more comfortable that you can do any other thing you may think of and that motivates you to do better and bigger things and in the years you progress well.

Those ones who always find all kinds of excuses to not finish what they start should know that they have excuses only for themselves, and they only stop them progressing in their own mind. All those who love "two more weeks", "when it done", probably have whole life structured the same. Like those ones who build houses for 20 years, or making some app 10 years and never release anything, or, always "learn" something instead of doing, or waiting for something like Jesus come / Amiga come / now-now-something-come instead of living :)

Usual stuff, but the point: if you start anything, better to finish it off, or it will always your mind's break. And deadlines (at least some sort of them) are a must. But maybe some ppls comfortable to not think about all this in that way, because sure easily just watching porn and eat popcorn :)

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@kas1e

Quite interestingly the deadline can also be for return to Amiga work after a break for important real life matters .
This is so for at least one Amiga Dev. He told me when he would restart Amiga stuff .
Is should check in with him next month to make sure he keeps to his deadline .

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@Spectre660
I *am* a programmer/developer. Every single thing Hans said is a fact of life in any company I have ever worked for. In my most recent 20 years of (various) employment, personnel resources are so thin that *no-one* except you know the myriad issues behind bigg-ish projects. I had to find what my "optimism factor" was in order to not ALWAYS disappoint anyone who noticed:

When asked, "When will you have it?", I think quite hard about what their "it" is, come up with my honest opinion of how many man-hours to present something that will not be an embarrassment. Then (for me) multiply it by 2.4. Managers above me cannot deal with man-hours and round it up to the next higher *calendar* month (day, week, month, quarter).

The best manager was one not long out-of-the-programming aspect of the company and could still be an active listener when I discussed what milestones could be identifiable. As Hans said, get some*one* to know your milestones and how they relate to the "When will it be done?" (and I have to ask them to ask ME, "How is it going?").

When all those things Hans mentioned do happen, the delay of the "done time" also happens. My wife kept shaking her head saying, "how can you work at programming that is so frustrating, never working? There is always something wrong!"

A programmer (not counting weird geniuses) is an optimist. I told her it was not that different from her doing N.Y.Times crossword puzzles in ink. "This is rewarding work, solving a problem with many dead ends, misinformation, and once "beat into submission" acts dutifully".

Understandably, with 35 years of Amiga development, we Amigans are merciless with promises of delivery dates missed. I am in favor of the "When it's done" with words dribbled out about any progress at all.

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Thank you, Hans. I fully agree. You perfectly summarized.
Guys, let's remember to read this article from time to time.

@ggw

Quote:

to present something that will not be an embarrassment.

I believe that was what we called the "Minimum Viable Product" at my workplace. That became quite an important element in our planning as we turned more and more into agile development in the last years I was working.

I could (and can) of course see the benefit of such a concept (the MVP), but I never got to love it, I was always more the sort of person who wanted to do a proper and complete job the first time around.

(Motto inherited from my grandfather: "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.". I know, I'm a dinosaur ...)

Best regards,

Niels

For work/paid projects I'll agree with the wisdom of Hans, however I disagree a litlle bit when it comes to hobby projects. For hobby (non-paid), at least for me, it's more about breaking the project up into a list of small goals that can be accomplished in a day or a week or two. I tend to define a minimum viable product with some idea of what I would like it to ultimatly be. Any features beyond MVP I add as comments in the code on features to add either up front, or as I am coding and ideas come to me. I also add features to the list as users request them. I then do enough coding to get out the MVP. Then I pick and choose from the feature list depending on how much time I feel like I would like to commit to coding at any given time. If I only feel like I want to code for a day or two, I'll pick an easy feature. If I feel like I have time or want to code for a week or two I wil pick a more complicated feature to add. This way I can make progress when I feel like coding but don't feel any pressure to get anything done. After all, it's a hobby project being done for fun. It's not supposed to be a project where I feel pressure to get something out. If I want that I can program at work. I use a self emposed Agile process without any overall deadline or schedules. If you look at releases of my previous project on OS4Depot you can see they all start with some real basic functionality, then over time got new features added.

This is the approach that works for me and has kept it enjoyale. Your milage may vary.

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@ktadd

Quote:

For work/paid projects I'll agree with the wisdom of Hans, however I disagree a litlle bit when it comes to hobby projects.

I couldn’t agree more. If you really want to hate your hobby, start to treat it like second job.

@Spectre660

Anyway setting mile stones, and do some project planning, do not let the project suffer feature creep.

Also say one more thing don’t be afreid of learning new things. That is pretty much a requirement as C/C++ developers. It does mean you most know every new feature, it just means you should at least try to know what is possible, you can’t know everything, but that is life.

Also, write tests, yes I know is boring but can be life saver.

Make sure to have good debugging system, you won’t regret it when you don’t know when and where things are failing.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 13-May-2020 at 09:48 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 13-May-2020 at 05:33 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

do some project planning, do not let the project suffer feature creep

And... treat feature requests as mere user ideas, rather than anything else. I learned a very valuable lesson when a user requested a feature for ADRipper, one that required quite a lot of effort to put in and test thoroughly. Working on the program in spare time (like most of today's Amiga developers), it took me a whole year to release the update. And guess what? The guy who had requested the feature was no longer an Amiga user at that point, so I didn't even hear a thank you

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@Spectre660

Thanks for the link. Hans gives good advice here.

When I learned Perl many years ago, I spent two weeks reading a book from cover to cover, and at the end of it discovered I couldn't write "Hello world" without looking back at the book. Since then I always code as I go. And I always refactor the examples, because everyone's code sucks except for my own.

Last edited by bison on 18-May-2020 at 04:00 PM.

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@Spectre660

How annoying. If I look at this in Odyssey and scroll down it totally freezes. I kept forgetting to close the tab when I opened Odyssey again.