jdh's blog

just one more compile

Hi. This is my opening foray into blogging. As such I will start small. I am small, so I guess that kind of fits.

I was practicing the piano recently (I am going to play (half of) a Schubert duet at an upcoming recital) and was reminded again of the similarity between practicing piano and coding. I have a very bad case of the "just one more compile" syndrome these days. You know how you really mean to leave for dinner, you mean to get to bed and get some rest, but you're hot into fixing a bug, or making some section of code more elegant and understandable. You haven't quite got it right, but you can see it there waiting for you, if you just try one more time... and then suddenly you've missed dinner, or ended up staying up to ridiculous hours. Not that you mind, because your mind is still racing even when you finally do stop.

That's how it is with practicing. Can't quite play some section with the right timing. Need to try out a different fingering. Is there a better way to get that entire phrase hang together and make emotional sense? No that's not quite it, let me try something else -- or, yes, that's getting there, now can I get it to really work reliably?

But then, I think everything's the same as everything else. Or at least has aspects that can be found to be similar. When I first started working in computers, I had to develop a filter to translate from one protocol to another. It was a new idea to me. For a long time after that, it seemed to me that everything was a filter of some sort. It still often seems that way. Why, playing the piano is being a filter isn't it! You read the music that the composer wrote and then provide your interpretation of it.

And then there's jazz. Kind of blows that analogy out of the water, doesn't it.

Ok, time to retreat. Bye.

Posted at 01:30AM Oct 27, 2006 by Julia Harper in Personal  |  Comments[0]