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The semi-colon thing to me really drives home the point that when I'm faced with a problem, I just feel so very stupid, so very incompetent, and then when I hav

by th0ma5 12y ago

The semi-colon thing to me really drives home the point that when I'm faced with a problem, I just feel so very stupid, so very incompetent, and then when I have a breakthrough (usually by letting my subconscious work on the problem for a while), I completely forget that I ever had a problem at all, and completely forget all of the misery I suffered through while it was a problem.

mod 12y ago
Two other ways to have your breakthrough: take a walk, and rubber duck debugging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging I've solved so, so many tough bugs while writing an email for help. I had to explain the problem with enough depth, and try all the things I know they'd say "have you tried X", before I sent it--and the solution appeared. That's RDD, essentially, with the fallback of getting help if you don't find your own answer!
- agumonkey 12y ago
  This, infinitely this. Many articles talk about that. It's when you defocus from a task (pause, shower, walk, talk) that your brain starts to get new insights.
VLM 12y ago
Something I find interesting about the large number of semicolon anecdotes in the comments is, as usual, LISPs got it right a long time ago. Unbalanced parens look weird even to non-programmers, and not wrapping up something you know is a "packaged unit of thought" also looks intuitively wrong even to non programmers. But should this line end with a semicolon; or not; hard to say Also, REPL driven development vs 100 lines of text you don't completely understand and pray it compiles and good luck understanding the errors in a 100 line program, although a one line REPL usually isn't hard to figure out which line had the error (LOL). You need not wear out your paren keys forever, but it might not be all that awful of an idea to at least start with a LISP like Scheme or Clojure or whatever, just to get the basics down. This is, uh, not a new idea or an original idea of my own. Could do worse than pick up "Little Schemer" book. Someone should write the "Little Clojurist" book... assuming someone hasn't already. (edited to add, embarrassing, I searched the publisher of the Little... series for the obvious title and found nothing, turns out there's multiple crowd sourced projects along this general line, none official or commercial, or probably, legal)

by th0ma5 12y ago

mod 12y ago

Two other ways to have your breakthrough: take a walk, and rubber duck debugging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging I've solved so, so many tough bugs while writing an email for help. I had to explain the problem with enough depth, and try all the things I know they'd say "have you tried X", before I sent it--and the solution appeared. That's RDD, essentially, with the fallback of getting help if you don't find your own answer!

agumonkey 12y ago
This, infinitely this. Many articles talk about that. It's when you defocus from a task (pause, shower, walk, talk) that your brain starts to get new insights.

VLM 12y ago

Something I find interesting about the large number of semicolon anecdotes in the comments is, as usual, LISPs got it right a long time ago. Unbalanced parens look weird even to non-programmers, and not wrapping up something you know is a "packaged unit of thought" also looks intuitively wrong even to non programmers. But should this line end with a semicolon; or not; hard to say Also, REPL driven development vs 100 lines of text you don't completely understand and pray it compiles and good luck understanding the errors in a 100 line program, although a one line REPL usually isn't hard to figure out which line had the error (LOL). You need not wear out your paren keys forever, but it might not be all that awful of an idea to at least start with a LISP like Scheme or Clojure or whatever, just to get the basics down. This is, uh, not a new idea or an original idea of my own. Could do worse than pick up "Little Schemer" book. Someone should write the "Little Clojurist" book... assuming someone hasn't already. (edited to add, embarrassing, I searched the publisher of the Little... series for the obvious title and found nothing, turns out there's multiple crowd sourced projects along this general line, none official or commercial, or probably, legal)