More realizations

Posted on October 27th, 2004 by Sacha Chua

I’m finding it hard to concentrate on my project.

I need users. I need to know that what I am doing will make a
difference, no matter how small or for no matter how short a time. I’m
working on something I’ll personally never use. I know no one else is
going to use the software, either. It’s hard to resist the temptation
to cut corners, to use a somewhat hairy implementation because I don’t
want to think of a better one. After all, bugs aren’t going to cause
anyone any inconvenience, and good features won’t make anyone’s day a
little better.

What I’m doing isn’t needed, and that makes me feel absent from my
work.

How is this different from school? Why did I have so much fun doing my
school projects? Perhaps it was because my school projects still had a
sense of novelty. Now, although I’d never programmed in Delphi before,
I get the feeling that I’m just translating from some existing mental
model instead of breaking a paradigm. I haven’t delved into Delphi
deeply enough to fall in love or even to get a sense of the
Delphi-ness of Delphi.

Granted, I’m supposed to be doing this in order to learn how the
Japanese work. The diagrams are the same as the ones I took up in
CS123 but never put into practice in a real project. People work
individually, occasionally asking their project manager for
clarifications.

I need to figure out what to do in order to make the most of my work
time. I refuse to go home drained. I refuse to spend most of my waking
hours doing something I consider to be a waste. I must find out what
is wonderful about this.

I have a lot of fun doing Japanese translation, and will probably
focus on that aspect. I will work on advanced grammar and vocabulary
as I prepare design documents. Although my work is not relevant to
other people, at least I can benefit myself.

Open source is my lifeline. Even if I contribute a few lines of code
here, a message or two there, I feel that I’m connected. I _exist._
I’m doing something useful. That’s important to me. Teaching, too, is
something I do because I love doing it and because I feel that I can
make a difference that way.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

More posts about: Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/2328

On This Day...

2012: Weekly review: Week ending October 26, 2012 — Conference crunch! I’ve been sketchnoting so much, and people really like what I share. Onward and upward! I’ve been [...]
2011: Transcript: Blogging (Part 9): Learning from others — Hat-tip to Holly Tse for organizing this interview! At the end of the blog series, I’ll put them all together [...]
2010: "But what can I talk about?" Toastmaster tactics for tackling topics — This is a talk I’m giving to the IBM Toronto Lab Toastmasters today. I should trim a few hundred words [...]
2007: Choosing a daily schedule in Emacs — There’s more than one way to plan your day in Emacs, just like there’s more than one way to do everything [...]
2007: Tweaking day-specific planner pages — If you set planner-day-page-template to a function. Planner invokes the function when creating a new day page. This means that you [...]
2007: Emacs: managing schedule — If you spend a lot of time in Emacs—writing code, reading mail, saving the world—then it makes sense to manage your [...]
2006: Don’t sell; help people buy — A book I’m reading right now (151 Quick Ideas to Get New Customers, by Jerry R. Wilson) notes that people hate [...]
2006: Heavy stuff nearer floor = good — I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this earlier. The perfect place for my heavy suitcases is, of course, *on the [...]
2006: Keeping track of the age of messages — I can get pretty bad at responding to e-mail. This is an experiment to see whether the negative reinforcement of seeing [...]
2006: Planet Emacsen — http://planet.emacsen.org/ by Edward O’Connor. ‘Nuff said! =D On Technorati: emacs, pimpmyemacs Random Emacs symbol: ido-subdir – Face: *Font used by ido for [...]
2006: Livin’ la Vida Emacs — Squee! <bounce, bounce, bounce> Democamp10: Back at Mars Last, and certainly not least was Sacha Chua. If we could harness it I’m [...]
2006: Looking for a personal board of advisors — I won’t be going to the Free Software and Open Source Symposium tomorrow because I’m meeting Stephen Perelgut and a possible [...]
2005: Argh. Blog comment spam. — I remember why I put off having online blog comments for the longest time. It’s just a lot of work filtering [...]
2005: Reading bursts — Now that I’ve given myself permission to buy books I like, my bookshelf is slowly but steadily growing. Here’s a [...]
2005: If you throw enough pots, you’ll be a master potter — If you throw enough pots, you’ll be a master potter. I got up this morning at 6:30 to write. The idea [...]
2005: Free Penguin — Free penguin sewing instructions! Oooh, cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!
2005: Planner tip #1: Overcome inbox insanity the Planner way — (641 words) Overloaded with e-mail? Overcome inbox insanity by using Planner to keep track of what you need to do. If you [...]
2004: Met Tomoko and her friend — I had a hard time finding Tomoko at the Shinjuku station because there were so many people. Even with cellphones, it [...]
2004: Kitted out — Went out in coat, gloves, scarf, and bonnet. Still felt cold, but didn’t shiver as much. And this is just autumn! [...]
2004: Translators EB — Date Saturday, Oct. 30 Time 6:00pm (til about 9, 9:30) Place Oiwake (Taito-ku Nishiasakusa 3-28-11) http://www.oiwake.info/ 3844-6283 Access Iriya on the Hibiya sen or Tawaramachi on the [...]

sacha chua living an awesome life