Re: [OFF-TOPIC] This is just a quick question.

From: Daniel A. Koepke (dkoepke@circlemud.org)
Date: 06/21/01


On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, Robert Masten wrote:

> but do any of you enjoy the mud coding so much that you get all the
> way up to putting up a mud...

This is generally true of all hobbiest programmers, especially game
programmers.  You wouldn't believe just how much code I've written and
never did anything with.  Sometimes I just write stuff for fun, without
ever having the intent to use it or release it.

So, yeah, it's normal.  There's a general desire to do every cool thing
(or, worse, anything that seems cool at the time, but turns out really not
to be) that ever pops into your head.  I just started writing them down on
a big TODO list a long time ago.  I've filled up a couple of notepads
worth of designs, sketches, thoughts, etc.

The real challenge, then, is never to be able to do a lot of eccletic
things, since that's the natural tendency of a hobbiest programmer, but to
be able to do one thing, keep it trim, make it right, and see it through
to the end.

Even professional programmers get caught up in this -- we fear the
interminable beast known as 'feature creep'.  Sometimes its not our fault,
of course: some of it comes from management droids that decide the day
before a milestone would be a *perfect* time to add their stupid pet
feature (which, of course, does nothing towards getting the program
finished, but will take 3 weeks for the first implementation and 3 months
to bug fix, causing us to miss some of the project's major goals because
we ran out of time and money and the product had to be shipped; then
somehow it's your fault that the project didn't meet expectations).


--
Daniel A. Koepke (dak), dkoepke@circlemud.org
Caveat emptor: I say what I mean and mean what I say.  Listen well.
Caveat venditor: Say what you mean, mean what you say.  Say it well.

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