Tuesday, April 18, 2006

One of the things I hate most in the world, is changing code that you can only check once its ALL been done. Its rare that this ever happens (with me at least), but I prefer to make small changes that can be built and tested in easy steps. Didn't happen today though! I spent the whole day typing away and making sweeping changes to the code. It probably wouldn't have worried me quite so much, but I've been changing it BACK into what I did have! When I joined Realtime Worlds I tried to follow the coding standard they have there, but when Russell joined, he set about making a standard for our project. This involves using the standard I normally use. Typical.

Still, A whole day of typing and it worked first time! The only other time I rememebr doing this was way (WAY!) back in 1992(ish) when I was doing Lemmings 2 on the SNES, I spent a week writing a single (although complex) routine that let me draw graphics onto the screen. It worked more or less first time too. Perhaps I should take the hint and write all my code this way, you seem to read it more before you run it and hence spend less time debugging the bugger.

A passing comment from Russell had me fizzing inside again; I remember telling Dave that one of the things I won't have, is being told I'm wrong. Now don't get me wrong, Russell knows what he's doing and I respect his judgement over most peoples, but he mentioned that something I did was badly designed, and I almost screamed. Part of the problem with learning new stuff is that you hardly ever use it correctly at first, and the "badly designed" part was a suggestion from someone else. I didn't want to do it that way in the first place. Every job I've worked, at somepoint someone has told me I'm wrong about something Im doing, and over the years I've come to notice that in the stuff I do, I'm usually not - not if its something I've sat down and thought about. I told Dave there were a couple of things that would make me leave. First one was being told I'm wrong all the time, 2nd was not enjoying my job or not being allowed to do the job I want. It'll be interesting to see if any of these come true here...

Looks like we might have mice again... I really need to move the rabbit hutchs so they dont attract mice and rats. We had rats a couple of months ago (well a rat - but it was big enough), and it ate everything in sight!

*sigh* its never easy.

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