I keep meaning to write something about the weird experience that re-learning to code can be. I wrote the following to a friend of mine, and I think I could rewrite it, but well, it says all that needs to be explained I guess.
My svn jutsu is pitiful, because I literally had no time yet to learn it and also, no cause (as in need-it-right-now project I need to do-right-now).
See, if you know more than a beginner but less than a newbie, the question is, what part of the universe of confusion to you de-entropy first?
If you want to do A but suddenly codus interruptus hits and you first need to figure out B, which depends on knowing C that requires you check out D... E... Zzzz(repeat ad nauseum) the best decision is to patz and just get the job done without getting sidetracked into studying properly.
The OPW placement was great, but put a lot of pressure on me to produce something semi-decent(and, I was (and am) slooooow) and so, I didn't have much time to read into things too deeply, plus, what can I say, coding is a habit and restarting after 10 years isn't all that easy -- you need to rebuild your coding short term memory space/riffs to be reliable, fluid and have enough slots, and that takes time.
They say you never forget how to ride a bike, that's true, but when you try after a long time, you get doms in your muscles, wobble the wheels and possibly fall off at least once.
The OPW placement was great, but put a lot of pressure on me to produce something semi-decent(and, I was (and am) slooooow) and so, I didn't have much time to read into things too deeply, plus, what can I say, coding is a habit and restarting after 10 years isn't all that easy -- you need to rebuild your coding short term memory space/riffs to be reliable, fluid and have enough slots, and that takes time.
They say you never forget how to ride a bike, that's true, but when you try after a long time, you get doms in your muscles, wobble the wheels and possibly fall off at least once.
Is it easier to re-learn than to start from scratch? I don't think so, it's harder in quite a few ways, because you tend to be overly critical without having the matching sound judgment. Even left over lunches don't come free :)
Reading through a manual for general understanding is very different to needing to get from A-B, and I had a lot of A-B'ing to do.
In fact, I didn't use svn at all (other than to stash code) until I put a lot of code in the wrong tree and had to use diff to get my work out *blush* , so I managed to contribute to svn (the gtest project) using svn the first time when I made the branch where I stashed the completed job. Plus I had commit access and no idea how to test this before I make a (potential) mess, so it had to work the first time. Ostrich egg omlette, anyone?
Eventually... I r.e.m.e.m.b.e.r.e.d that svn itself has a merge program and that kdiff is actually trying to do the merge instead of just showing me the code (I'm slow I know, LOL) and it did it all bar a couple of simple line hierarchy queries.
And, to top it all, this one segment of code that drives kdiff is actually the *one{and only}* thing I understand in svn (because I coded it, plus I tried to code a fix in for the merge label bug which died because it broke something else, and there could only be one), but did I make the connection? Of course not, doh.
Maybe I should've bought a dunce cap instead of a Stetson.
---- Well, this is what she wrote. ----
