Trusting the Development Process (spoiler: it’s not about trusting)

The Setup

I’ve recently started using quill.js in a personal project I made up; specifically so I could build something with quill.js.

The app is geared towards learning pieces of text by rote learning. The user will pick a piece of text or enter their own in one text editor and then retype it in another text area. As the user types mispelled or wrong words (wrong in order or just plain wrong) are highlighted in some way.
That’s the beta gist.

I’ve gone through three different concepts of tracking and comparing text.
The first one piddled out as not durable enough to a users whimsical fancy’s, say, moving the cursor back to an earlier piece of the text and typing there (I know! Who does that!).

The second allowed for that.

The third came when I realized I actually had a use case for the first’s way of tracking, in a way that wouldn’t break and (get this) based on lightbulbs coming on while developing the second.

The Meat and Potatoes

You can see what I’m getting to here. Starting out, I thought for sure the first way would be the one. It was brilliance incarnate.

And then, well, the second way surely was the one. It was Neo incarnate (yeah, your mind went there too?).

And then came the middle way, the encapsulating, all encompassing, all inclusive we love everyone-everyone has a place in our world and is interconnected, have my pie and eat it too way.

Which is nice.

It doesn’t always work out like that (read that as 99% not always) and it’s something I’ve gotten better at letting happen. Writing 150 lines of code and then seeing it not work well enough is no longer a waste of time, it was just what I needed to go through to find what would work. Often pieces of that code, or concepts in the code, are useable in the next iteration.

Sure, it can be a bit frustrating, especially if I’m not enthralled with the project, but the recognition of the need to start over and find the better way is the motiviation which…well…motivates. Bemoaning “my lost code” wastes my energy, it only needs the recognition and then to move on.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean one shouldn’t/doesn’t need to research and think ahead. You do and I might say you are wasting your time if you don’t. I am saying that when you have “done your due diligence” and it’s still not perfect then is the time to recognize and move on.

And to be honest, “Trusting the development process” simply means not trusting it over and over again until you hurt yourself enough and realize it sucks not to (and is not helpful either). So, it’s not really trusting, it’s more self preservation.

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