Because of the holiday this coming week, I’m trying something different.
Instead of working on the next chapter of 7 Hard Problems I’m going to give myself kind of a treat and flip over the Deep Work to learning how to program in Go.
Actually, I’ve been at this for a while. I’ve done the basic tutorials. I’ve carved out a project — writing a parser to take input from MyLifeOrganized and use it for a variety of outputs — and I’ve got the bare bones of the parser turning over.
I ground to a halt by “death of a thousand cuts” because I basically wasn’t very fluent in the language. Each time I hit a snag — and they were often basic snags about syntax — the wind would go out of my sails and I’d lose time on the project.
So I decided it was time to read The Go Programming Language, as near as I can find to a definitive reference, from cover to cover.
I’m about halfway through. In Chapter 5 (“Functions”) to be exact. I’ve been fitting it in around the edges of the work on 7Hard.
Well, I’m going to shoot my Deep Work wad this week on Go, and hopefully bull through the rest of the book.
Where will I be at after that? An expert in Go? Maybe. What I’m hoping is that I’ll now be fluent enough that I can work away on the parser in smaller dribs and drabs — a Pomo or two at a time, say — and not lose my gumption every time I hit a snag.
Because I have a mission. My next weight-loss treat.
I’ve been using tech toys to spur my weight loss. An Android tablet. An Android watch. A Sonos sound system for our house. Etc.
Well the next tech toy is not going to be a product, it’s going to be having permission to finish the MLO Parser.
Why reward myself for writing software?
- It’s off-purpose. I’m supposed to be mainly about 7Hard this next six months or so.
- It’s a treat.
- It’s not harmful
So off-purpose treats that aren’t harmful are great weight-loss rewards. And that’s what I’m going to do.