I don't ever finish anything.
Naturally a very good point in the editorial. I haven't the slightest intrest in denying that!
My thought however is about Kerm's reason for shelving projects. Time is a wonderful reason. Lack of ability is too, but Kerm does not have that. But about, mostly Sandpaper: it is a novelty; foolishness. But sometimes if you cannot be foolish, you cannot be awesome, agreed?
Besides, about the tablet/smartphone comment - I cannot get a smartphone (though Kerm can) and neither do I want to! Graphing calcs are fun and easy to use, and when the graphing calculator WiFi bridge is invented, Sandpaper sould be an amazing tool.
What with getting older, more "realistic", busier, and more knowledgable, personally I am currently believing Kerm Martian's Calculator Superstardom (as I heard it called once) may be at the end. Graphing calculator awesomeness seems to be for more high school age or so, maybe.
Also, even as it pertains to calc video games: Kerm, you are looking at them(at least the ones you program) as utilities! Utilities for having fun. But, what about programming something (like a BASIC port of Tetris) for the sake of programming, and for the sake of... doing it! And having done it. Perhaps the problem is one, you have done it, and two, you do not have time to spend on making a sub-par program. (though if it is good programming, it can't truly be sub-par, I wouldn't think)

Anyway, quite a true point, the editorial. Sorry for the long post!
The only reason a bunch of my Prizm projects stall is either lack of motivation or I can't fix a problem in it(I ask in my topic, but usually no one replies right away when I actually have the motivation). Anyways, I totally agree with this post, and I would do more smaller projects, but either someone else has already done it or I can't find a small project to do(lack of creativity). I'm hoping to get some of my projects out eventually, but it is unlike for that soon.
DJ_O hits the mark with his comments. I think this again, applies to many other aspects in life: "perfectionism stifles creativity". The quest to build the most elegant code becomes the end rather than the means. I don't see much wrong (in this culture) with borrowing other peoples code as long its is credited and with permission. There is little to be gained by re-inventing code for the sake of it - although you should always try to understand code that you use. I recall an early project at school where I tried to build a relational database in BASIC and ended up with a bloated mess of dubious code where as a friend successfully coded a simple trig. solver in short elegent code and got more marks. Managing projects is also critical. An hour spent formulating a game plan with flowcharts, milestones and bits of psuedo-code will prevent heart-break and disillusionment months later...
Hindsight is a wonderful thing...
CalebHansberry wrote:
Time is a wonderful reason. Lack of ability is too, but Kerm does not have that. But about, mostly Sandpaper: it is a novelty; foolishness. But sometimes if you cannot be foolish, you cannot be awesome, agreed?
That's why things like CALCnet exist in the first place. If I had to answer "why" and justify the business sense of all of my projects, I'd be stumped, but with hobby projects, "because [I/we] can" is not only a valid but awesome answer.
Quote:
What with getting older, more "realistic", busier, and more knowledgable, personally I am currently believing Kerm Martian's Calculator Superstardom (as I heard it called once) may be at the end. Graphing calculator awesomeness seems to be for more high school age or so, maybe.
My fear is even that graphing calculator awesomeness might not even be for high school/college students any more. But I don't think age has anything to do with programmers' interest and prowess in the community. BrandonW, tifreak8x, and benryves are all my seniors, and Merthsoft and elfprince13 are only slightly younger than me.
Quote:
Perhaps the problem is one, you have done it, and two, you do not have time to spend on making a sub-par program. (though if it is good programming, it can't truly be sub-par, I wouldn't think)
That's part of the problem; making a less-than-stellar program isn't worth time when one has a ton of projects and project ideas, and making a stellar program takes a great deal of time. Therefore it's important to be selective with which project ideas you take to fruition.

ti83head wrote:
An hour spent formulating a game plan with flowcharts, milestones and bits of psuedo-code will prevent heart-break and disillusionment months later...
Hindsight is a wonderful thing...
A thousand times this. Lack of proper planning and lack of proper backups/versioning are two of the biggest problems to plague community programmers, I believe.
Kerm, you and i are probably about the same age.

And another thing that can help prevent projects getting lost/abandoned (and help inspire other amazing projects) is releasing the source Wink
My current project (The Antelope programming language) was a successor to an older language (Antidisassemblage). After a two year leave, I came back to find that my the compiler for that language still had some unsightly bugs, and the language was missing important features (multiplication & division, and anything OOP related).

I was going to revise the language and get it to a completely functional state with all the missing features (which was doable), but I already knew many ways in which the compiler and the language could have been designed much better; so I scrapped Antidisassemblage for Antelope, because it would be a waste of time to finish something that had already flopped (in a practical sense, not in a learning sense) and would have been held together by lots of tape and rubber bands, when I could juts make something much better to begin with.

... Maybe this is not the best example though, since I've been working on this language since the start of 2010, and have already revised it significantly many times over. On the other hand, this is because I will not finish it when I realize there is something that needs major fixing or rethinking. Also, I suppose analyzing a language (over and over) is half the fun for me anyway; but part of my mind set is that if/when I release it, it will not be missing anything vital or big, and trying to find where that meets nice syntax and a trimmed down model.
I always end with unfinished proof of concept, but I hope I will continue.
  
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