Nao

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The hardships of being a perfectionist?
« on April 23rd, 2013, 07:43 PM »Last edited on April 25th, 2013, 05:27 PM
No; he happened to post on the elk forums yesterday, so it would be surprising that for some reason, he couldn't make it to his own forum on the same day, I would say...
This isn't the first time he's done this. He'll come back. I'd just appreciate if he could tell me what's upset him, instead of leaving without a word... But I can't change people, can I? Can i..?

:edit: Fixed topic name...

Arantor

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Re : The harships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #1, on April 23rd, 2013, 08:15 PM »
I've deliberately given it a few days to calm down somewhat. You'll notice that here was the only place I avoided over the last few days. I even released a mod on sm.org inspired by my commits to Wedge (and including a possible new minor enhancement depending on how well it works out), a clue to some people that I was *really* pissed off. Getting vocal about it a few days ago wouldn't have helped with anything, though.

What upset me? Well, let's see.

* Criticising me for missing a comma in the CSS files and being snarky that I didn't catch it at commit time when you've done similar and worse things in the past. Almost like you'd committed stuff without even testing it once first.

* Overbearing sense of optimisation - after I'm done with the warning system, if I have any sanity left, I won't be touching any of the CSS files again, I'll just ask you to add the styles required and you can worry about optimising them. As for anything else, I actively don't like adding things to any page that isn't buried away any more for the simple reason that you'll complain about the number of bytes I use. As a result, adding new features stopped being fun some time ago. For a while, pretty much everything I've added has been because I believe it's necessary for Wedge to be able to compete with other platforms, not because I'm enjoying the process.

As I suggested on the thoughts previously, if I'm going to spend x time writing it and you spend y time rewriting it, we might both save some time if you just spend something like (x+y)/2 time writing it correctly the first time.

In any case, premature optimisation is the devil's work for idle hands. The best example I have is the menu icons - they are pretty well optimised, and don't get me wrong, that's an achievement in itself. However, it doesn't matter that mods adding menu icons is a completely fucked up process that's entirely skin dependent (meaning mods just won't *bother*) and even when I've asked in the past about improving that, it's gone unnoticed.

I'm going to end up writing an entire menu management system so that plugins and users can implement their buttons, without having to juggle around the menu icons optimisation because they have no better method of doing it.[1]

* The hypocrisy that goes on around here. You complain that no-one answers your threads and provides opinions, you complain that I don't answer your questions - but that's *exactly* what happens with you and my threads. You even admitted it yourself that you're *pages* behind in some of the topics that are pretty important. You'd have noticed, if you'd read them, that with the features I'm trying to write, I'm having trouble doing it, not on a technical basis but where it's actively screwing me up, and then you start criticising me for what I did manage to commit, which was specifically done for YOUR benefit, not mine.

All you've managed to do is make me feel like my commits are perpetually substandard, and that I shouldn't ever commit anything again unless it's a completed feature, fully tested, over optimised and so on, without any WIP or partial bits like I've done in the past. I also have the strong feeling that I should just commit what I feel like without really asking opinions on it any more and assume that I always know best.


@agent47, sorry, yes, I am that petty. Being petty is part of what generally makes a good programmer, because it makes us worry about the details.
 1. The act of adding a single line of CSS manually is irritating enough, but hands up who remembers Weglas? It was a skin I did based on Bloc's BlueLight theme. The menu changes I made would *break* every time with buttons that weren't part of the main skin declaration. Which was any plugin that added any button to the menu. Even when I cleared the cache after the plugin was installed.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Powerbob

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Pentaxian

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Re : The harships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #3, on April 24th, 2013, 12:57 PM »
Hey guys, maybe this is the time to say I really admire you two, each for your own merits, but surely also for the way you're cooperating in this huge project. In my opinion this irritation is an inevitable consequence of this process. It's a miracle it doesn't happen more. Keep up the good work!

Arantor

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Re : The harships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #4, on April 25th, 2013, 04:26 AM »
I'd also add, the CSS file modifications that I made, do not waste time optimising them. I've already gutted them and replaced them with something else. I haven't benchmarked the bytes difference but I did move it out of index.css and into index.member.css for you.

Of course, I won't be committing until I'm done, wouldn't want to waste any of your time on WIP code now, would I?

Nao

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Re : The harships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #5, on April 25th, 2013, 02:33 PM »
I'm not interested in fighting with you, Pete... I don't even see a reason for you to be upset with me.
Quote from Arantor on April 23rd, 2013, 08:15 PM
I've deliberately given it a few days to calm down somewhat. You'll notice that here was the only place I avoided over the last few days. I even released a mod on sm.org inspired by my commits to Wedge (and including a possible new minor enhancement depending on how well it works out), a clue to some people that I was *really* pissed off.
Err... I'm not sure, why you would go through the agony of re-using SMF's mod system when you went to great length to rewrite it all, and I don't see either in what way it's a clue as to your situation... What does it mean? That you want to dump Wedge, and join the SMF dev team or something..? Would seem like a huge step backwards, wouldn't it..?
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* Criticising me for missing a comma in the CSS files and being snarky that I didn't catch it at commit time when you've done similar and worse things in the past. Almost like you'd committed stuff without even testing it once first.
We all do that from time to time... What matters is that it's caught, isn't it..? I was mainly thinking, that if it works it's only due to Wess being relatively cool with commas, but other than that I'm unsure whether you committed this as a last-minute change while documenting the changelog (like I often do -- and this is where most of my bugs come from, even though I've become increasingly tough with myself at these particular times...), or if you simply didn't catch it at dev time, and 'it worked', so you didn't have to bother...

Also, you know me better than that. 'Criticizing' is a bit of harsh to qualify my comments... No?
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As a result, adding new features stopped being fun some time ago.
That's for you to solve, not me...

The reason why Wedge's development has gone with very few hiccups in the last three years, is that quite early on we individually chose to focus on different things. You went for the long-term 'wow' factor that new big features represent (I, myself, feel that my work on Aeva Media is enough to justify my contribution to the feature department :P), while I went for the 'immediate' wow factor that is the design, layout, and bandwidth savings that contribute to making a website load faster, and being more efficient altogether.
BOTH of these areas are crucial to make Wedge a success, really... So, we need to both be at the top of our game. And when I'm touching an area in the admin section that I'm not too sure about, I always consult with you beforehand, because I don't want to add any difficulties for you. On my side, though, developing CSS and JS is something that's going to be done by external developers as well, so (1) Wess & co. need to be as flexible as possible (so I don't mind you doing things differently, as it helps me see how others might 'exploit' Wess in interesting ways), and (2) as the Wedge source code will be the primary source of inspiration to themers and plugin authors, we need it to be clean and tight, and a 'good example' of how to do things correctly, so with regards to (1), if I find anything in your CSS that can be improved upon, I will. And I'm absolutely expecting you to do the same with my code, really... Even CSS! If you feel like it's going to be better if I do something one way rather than the other, regardless of how many bytes it takes, fine by me; my only real concern, really, is to prevent Wedge from being bloated. That is why, whenever I add a new feature, I try to 'compensate' for it by optimizing elsewhere (or in the same place), like I did with thoughts today. (It saves bytes everywhere -- JS, CSS and HTML, cached or not.)

It does seem like a no-brainer to me... We both respect each other (at least I hope so, because that would be a huge waste of three years for one of us if it wasn't the case, right..?), and we work in different areas because we do what we're best at (and, for an unpaid job, what we enjoy the most really), and Wedge is a huge enough codebase to justify working on different areas, anyway... We can't do everything, or at least not everything right...
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For a while, pretty much everything I've added has been because I believe it's necessary for Wedge to be able to compete with other platforms, not because I'm enjoying the process.
Another difference of opinion between us...
I think you're an absolute genius at adding 'natural' features to a forum platform; taking things apart, and saying "this is how it should be done, not how it's been done the last 15 years everywhere else..." If I did the same, it would be potentially shocking because over the years, I've made  some pretty... 'interesting', and 'scary' designs for a default theme, but really I threw them all away because I'm trying to appeal to everyone, and those who are used to how SMF does things, should also be accounted for. Admin area is different, because it only concerns one person, the admin, and you've been working hard to make it fun for them to use, anyway.

The difference in opinions stems from the fact that I believe, as a couple of geeks who've been spending all our time on a crazy project for nearly three years, we're entitled to do *what we want*, rather than *what we think others want*. Sure, a large part of our work should be catered to doing things with other users in mind, but it's also an opportunity to just have fun with complex problems, and elegant solutions.
Plus, it makes for a happier Nao, and a happier Arantor. And when we're happy, we're likely to keep working on it.
Never put anyone else's comfort before yours. Unless they frigging pay you for it.
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As I suggested on the thoughts previously, if I'm going to spend x time writing it and you spend y time rewriting it, we might both save some time if you just spend something like (x+y)/2 time writing it correctly the first time.
Have you ever seen me revert a change of yours (perhaps a minor one at worst!), or rewrite something of yours significantly..?
No, because I don't tend to touch your code, I only double-check it when you commit it, and as we discussed before, I like adding my 'touch' on it, and you told me you didn't mind, so I just kept doing it, because I'll never change something significantly without consulting with you first. Really, I'm surprising you're saying that of me... :-/

Anyway, yes, feel free to commit your CSS and JS "unoptimized", and I'll do it for you. Because do you know one of the things I enjoy the most out of my code..? Yes, fucking saving fucking bytes. I just love it. That's why I count them. That's also why I don't mind when suddenly the filesize grows by a kilobyte or two (like it did when we merged Dragooon's notification system): because it's a new challenge for me, to make it even smaller...! I just love that. That, and making sure that it still works efficiently, and doesn't add any bloat anywhere. (For instance, in the last commit, I removed a couple of lines of CSS that were unneeded, as well as an equally unneeded wetem::load; and believe me, even though it took me far more minutes to check these than the savings deserved, it really made me happy, on the spot. And that's what matters. Keep a Nao happy, and you get your Wedge going.)
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In any case, premature optimisation is the devil's work for idle hands.
It's not so premature, considering we're way closer to a public release than to the first days, eh..?
Once it's out in the public, I won't be able to do CSS and template changes in a, hmm... in a way that's so inconsequent, as I'll have to take plugins and skins into account, and whether or not I'm going to break something, and whether it's worth it.... So, yeah, I'm optimizing now, because I like it, and because I know it'll be harder to do it later on. So, it's "just-in-time optimizing", if you want ;)
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The best example I have is the menu icons - they are pretty well optimised, and don't get me wrong, that's an achievement in itself. However, it doesn't matter that mods adding menu icons is a completely fucked up process that's entirely skin dependent (meaning mods just won't *bother*) and even when I've asked in the past about improving that, it's gone unnoticed.
Perhaps I missed your post, simply...? I don't see in what way it's so hard to add menu icons, really..?

If you want to be able to add them from plugin CSS, then I can certainly move my button classes to common.css so that they benefit from them, but it's not that big a deal really, as they can simply re-use the same CSS, I'd say..? They can even do dynamic functions, at least that's what it was built to do...

(Oh, and speaking of dynamic functions, I spent a few minutes optimizing the smiley one, this morning... It saves a dozen bytes. It may not seem much, but considering I only changed the file loading order and nothing else, it's a nice improvement. I may even get more out of it by sorting the files by name, but I don't think it's worth the research, at least not today...)
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The menu changes I made would *break* every time with buttons that weren't part of the main skin declaration. Which was any plugin that added any button to the menu. Even when I cleared the cache after the plugin was installed.
I don't remember that issue...
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* The hypocrisy that goes on around here. You complain that no-one answers your threads and provides opinions, you complain that I don't answer your questions - but that's *exactly* what happens with you and my threads.
Yes, you can blame me for expecting more of you in that respect than I'm doing myself. Why so..? Because to me, it seems like you're able to do so many different things at the same time, when I'm struggling to just keep up with balancing between real life, and Wedge life.
So, yes, I've skipped a lot of topics, and I kept doing so, because you told me it was okay, and that you'd tell me whenever you'd need my opinion (by PM or whatever). Recently, we added notifications for that, but I'm not 'done' with them yet, and I'm not even used to checking it constantly... But I've planned to them to be a life-changer for me, regarding how it influences my way to follow the forum, I'd say...

Also, while sometimes I'm bumping my posts and fishing for opinions, I'm not just asking for yours in particular... I also value very fondly the opinions of our consultants, but also those of anyone who has anything to say on a given subject, and takes time to do it. It's just that, sometimes, people seem to think that conversations are 'just' between you and me, and they can't intervene... Which, if you'll allow me, is a bit silly...
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You even admitted it yourself that you're *pages* behind in some of the topics that are pretty important.
24 pages of unread topics, yeah...
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You'd have noticed, if you'd read them, that with the features I'm trying to write, I'm having trouble doing it, not on a technical basis but where it's actively screwing me up, and then you start criticising me for what I did manage to commit, which was specifically done for YOUR benefit, not mine.
But where did I criticize your work in a way that came to upset you that much...?
Heck, you know I'm just as insecure as you are... You know I admire your work, and you know that I don't know I could do a tenth of what you've been doing for Wedge. Just as I know that you consider me to be 'the best man' to work on JS/CSS/HTML, and keeping up with new technologies, and things like that... (Hopefully!!)
I'm not shocked whenever someone says they don't like this or that in my work... In fact, it usually means it can be done better: either by rewriting, or by actually explaining why it's better... Sometimes, people just need a little convincing! And if you have it in you, it's very easy, really, to convince them. Otherwise, maybe it really has a problem, so... Time well spent, either way!
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All you've managed to do is make me feel like my commits are perpetually substandard,
Which, of course, they aren't...
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and that I shouldn't ever commit anything again unless it's a completed feature, fully tested, over optimised and so on, without any WIP or partial bits like I've done in the past.
If you're so uncomfortable with this, are you sure you ever want to go public..? :-/ You need to assert your capabilities. You did get your Zend certification, after all, something I'm not sure I'm even capable of getting (hence why I'm not even looking into trying), and your knowledge of programming is vast, but it's still tiny compared to how well you know what you do in general. You always have the last word, because you have things to bring to the table, and you know better. Some people hate you for that, but most love you for it. And I'm just surprised to see that, in contrast with your immensely wider knowledge than any of us in here, you're still uncomfortable with details that people are giving you in response to your commits. To give you an image -- it's as if you'd started painting the Mona Lisa, were close to finishing it, and then suddenly decided to throw it away because your pigment assistant said he would have chosen a dark grey over your light black to represent this tree in the shadows. Not even considering the fact that he may or may not be right about it, it's a tiny detail, and is due to the fact that he doesn't like praising his boss for nothing and make him think that it's just a way to keep his position... No. That assistant genuinely likes the work, and his specialty is pigments, so he's just giving his opinion on this minor thing because, well, it can still be changed, and if he managed to get one of his ideas into the painting, he would be proud to be associated with it...

That's the general idea, yes. While we're not working on the Mona Lisa of boards (but not far from it, though ;)), we're still very proud of our own work, and aware of our talent, and still fragile when it comes to criticism. But it doesn't mean we should engage in battles like the one you seemingly want to jump into. No, Pete, I won't fight with you. If you want me to apologize for hurting your feelings, even if I don't understand where or when I hurt them, then I'll apologize. But it still won't stop me from making further comments in the future about your work, not because I'm dissatisfied with it, but simply because I'm eager to add a stone to your church, that's all.
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@agent47, sorry, yes, I am that petty. Being petty is part of what generally makes a good programmer, because it makes us worry about the details.
We're unpaid, and we're hurting our health working like crazy on these things. There's definitely a small hint of pride in what we both do with our lives, I guess... ;)

Arantor

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Re: The harships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #6, on April 25th, 2013, 04:43 PM »
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I don't see either in what way it's a clue as to your situation...
The fact I'd deliberately go back to an inferior system - and share something I'd done from a better system.
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What matters is that it's caught, isn't it..? I was mainly thinking, that if it works it's only due to Wess being relatively cool with commas, but other than that I'm unsure whether you committed this as a last-minute change while documenting the changelog
The fact it's caught is great. What bothers me is that you complained about it and made a big thing out of it (along with the fact I hadn't used 'final' somewhere else) when I made it very clear that it was WIP and subject to change. Combined with the fact that this feature is seriously freaking me out and this just seemed like one step too far, you know?
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or if you simply didn't catch it at dev time, and 'it worked', so you didn't have to bother...
I didn't catch it at dev time, because I had zero way to test it at dev time. In any case, not only did the code not work due to the missing commas (there were multiple), there were bits missing anyway because of other changes I'd made elsewhere, but last night I stitched that bit all back together (and with shiny new code that doesn't have a direct .gif call in the template)

But I'd draw a parallel to the one fixed in r2052 in Class-CSS.php, the main reason I even noticed is because you mentioned it on the forum. Everything you said to me about my missing a comma in the CSS files applies to that typo. Only I thought it simpler not to mention it (but would have fixed it in my next commit quietly)
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Also, you know me better than that. 'Criticizing' is a bit of harsh to qualify my comments... No?
Well, I thought I did. But the tone from your comments did some overly critical, especially in light of the comments I've made recently about not being able to cope with this new feature development.
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It does seem like a no-brainer to me... We both respect each other (at least I hope so, because that would be a huge waste of three years for one of us if it wasn't the case, right..?), and we work in different areas because we do what we're best at (and, for an unpaid job, what we enjoy the most really), and Wedge is a huge enough codebase to justify working on different areas, anyway... We can't do everything, or at least not everything right...
That's part of the problem: over the last few weeks I haven't exactly felt that. Being brutally honest, there is still a lot of respect on both sides for our respective talents, but the feeling I've had is that we seem to have different goals these days.

The stuff you do is great, and don't let me or anyone else try and tell you otherwise, but there is a certain mindset I'm noticing: developing in a sort of bubble.

For example, the repeated points about PURLs being broken - it's never been investigated because from your perspective it works just fine. But I'm only too aware that for a large number of installations it's going to be absolutely unusable - all because it doesn't work properly when in a subdirectory. I don't know the code well enough to explore it, but I just feel like at some point I'll have to.

I want to ensure that the last 3 years haven't been a colossal waste of both our time. And to me, I need to make sure that Wedge has the facilities it needs to compete. It needs to solve all the issues I've seen with SMF, and be the platform it was always destined to be: one of pure fucking awesome. More awesome than rainbow-coloured unicorn poop.

The problem is, I kind of feel that we're not entirely building that. I feel like you're building what makes you happy, which is a good thing, but that it's at a tangent to what Wedge needs sometimes. Diving down the rabbit hole with Wess or JSE, these are great things and make life easier in the long run, but to burn amazing amounts of time on things few people will ever really notice or use seems somewhat sad :(

There is a more important point, though. I actually don't like using Wess, I've realised. Things seem to change a little too often, meaning that what I should have been doing a few weeks ago is not how it should necessarily be done any more, and as I said you could explain it but I suspect it'd go over my head.

When I'm writing CSS stuff, it takes me typically twice as long as just using raw CSS for the simple reason that I write it, and it either doesn't work, or doesn't work as expected. I find it a chore to work with, but that's because I don't use it enough. Trouble is, every time I do use it, I write inefficient code so as I said, I might as well save us both the time and let you write it efficiently in the first place.
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I don't remember that issue...
Add a menu button. It will not have an icon, even if you clear the cache. The only way I could find to do that was to have an add_css() call in the plugin when it was called for the menu_items hook.

Sort of like so:

Code: [Select]
add_css('
.m_chess { float: left; width: 16px; height: 16px; padding: 0; background: url("' . $context['plugins_url']['Arantor:Chess'] . '/img/chess_small.png") no-repeat 0 0; margin:4px 2px 0 2px; }');

Though that's probably wrong. But it illustrates a number of the issues in one line.

Firstly: the fact a mod has to do it at all using its *own* CSS, every page where it wants to do this (because there's no way to extend the dynamic function in question)
Secondly: there's nothing to hook on to style-wise. It's not like .m_chess will be able to extend a menu_items class in this context to have the float, size, background-repeat or margin preset for it.
Thirdly: if a menu decides to do *anything* with the main menu that is in any way different to this, the plugin will now be broken because it can't inherit from the parent properly. Weglas demonstrated this by having odd artefacts to the sides of the menu item. And a skin can't anticipate what menu items it's going to have to deal with.

Here's the kicker: all of this could be fudged in some fashion as a contrivance through the plugin manager (either manually or automatically) issuing a clear-CSS-cache and the dynamic function having some kind of hook, but honestly that's not the way I want to go here. A full on menu editor would be much more suitable.
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If you want to be able to add them from plugin CSS, then I can certainly move my button classes to common.css so that they benefit from them, but it's not that big a deal really, as they can simply re-use the same CSS, I'd say..? They can even do dynamic functions, at least that's what it was built to do...
That's just it, they *can't*. Not unless a plugin can inject into the CSS *file* itself and force a rebuild, and frankly I'd rather not encourage that. It's completely arse-about-face.

It's why even with all the changes I'd made so far to the calendar, I didn't even bother re-adding a menu icon for it.
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So, yes, I've skipped a lot of topics, and I kept doing so, because you told me it was okay, and that you'd tell me whenever you'd need my opinion (by PM or whatever). Recently, we added notifications for that, but I'm not 'done' with them yet, and I'm not even used to checking it constantly... But I've planned to them to be a life-changer for me, regarding how it influences my way to follow the forum, I'd say...
See, generally, I wouldn't mind. But as is now pretty clear, I'm somewhat fragile at the moment and it's been hard enough to actually admit it, let alone even the possibility of asking someone for help. I guess I'd kind of hoped you'd notice the topics (especially being a big feature and all)
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Yes, you can blame me for expecting more of you in that respect than I'm doing myself. Why so..? Because to me, it seems like you're able to do so many different things at the same time, when I'm struggling to just keep up with balancing between real life, and Wedge life.
I blame my former employer, a subsidiary of Lehman Bros, for that little 'skill'. When you're working through letters and faxes for folks' mortgages, while trying to take shouty phone calls from lawyers demanding to know why you haven't answered their letter yet (and do this for probably 30-40 mortgage cases while taking 60-100 phone calls... PER DAY), you learn to multi-task.

That and the fact that I have no real life to speak of outside of what I do in terms of code. I normally go out twice a week, once to see my mum (and visit my grandmother in the care home) and once to do my weekly shopping. If it weren't for those two things I wouldn't go outside the house. These days I'm frequently up till 5am coding. (It used to be 2am)

This is how I'm able to do it: because I have pro-grade multi-tasking skills and because I have no-one else in my life. This is not something to emulate. It doesn't help that yesterday while out at my mother's, I was reconfiguring their new router and discussing my sister's love life dramas >_< At the same time.
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But where did I criticize your work in a way that came to upset you that much...?
I overreacted, and I'm sorry. I overreacted out of small things because I'm not coping with this big thing. It's driving me nuts.
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If you're so uncomfortable with this, are you sure you ever want to go public..?
I'm not normally uncomfortable, as evidenced by the fact that I released a mod to the SMF community (of my code), which the team reviewed, found one issue and I stood my ground on it (though I did accept that I'd implement it in the future if I got time, just for the sake of completeness)

I'm uncomfortable because it's just seemed like lately if a commit isn't *perfect*, it doesn't just get reviewed, it gets jumped on. The last few features I've done have been that way a bit... even if I make a note in the commit note about something not being finished.
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You did get your Zend certification, after all, something I'm not sure I'm even capable of getting (hence why I'm not even looking into trying)
You are kidding me, right? I have absolutely no doubt that if you were to spend *any* time on it you would be able to pass. The greatest weakness that I had with it is, incidentally, much the same as yours: things we never use in PHP because we've never had a reason to, DOMDocument, streams, the SOAP stuff, PDO. In my case I had a certain amount of good fortune in that both SimpleXML and file uploads were things I'd worked with in the days beforehand, and they both came up, but I would expect anyone who is actually familiar with PHP to pass most things on it.

In your particular case, I'd suggest if you did want to go for it, you'd need to pick up on Iterators and things like ArrayAccess. Probably 50% of what would be on the exam should be a no-brainer for you. It's only that bit between 50% and the pass grade, and really I do think you're up to it. It's hard, sure, but it wouldn't be worth anything if it wasn't.
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You always have the last word, because you have things to bring to the table, and you know better.
I always have the last word because I'm arrogant enough to believe I know better. The problem is I really don't half the time. That's one of the advantages to spending time at sm.org is that it has an uncanny habit of keeping my feet on the ground, except when I'm dealing with fecking eejits.
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And I'm just surprised to see that, in contrast with your immensely wider knowledge than any of us in here, you're still uncomfortable with details that people are giving you in response to your commits.
I'm still uncomfortable with what feels excessive (when it isn't) when I'm feeling fragile. And some of that fragility is because I don't have the tools to explain why I feel the way I do, or anything to relate it to so that most people here would understand why I'm not coping.[1]

It's also a lot of frustration on my part for feeling like I should just be able to kick this out of the park and not break a sweat from it - I'm frustrated with my own perception of self-weakness.
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To give you an image -- it's as if you'd started painting the Mona Lisa, were close to finishing it, and then suddenly decided to throw it away because your pigment assistant said he would have chosen a dark grey over your light black to represent this tree in the shadows.
Interesting analogy. And I can see where you're coming from.

From my perspective, it's more like I'd started painting the Mona Lisa and Salai[2] told me that I'd painted it wrong even though I'd muttered it was a word in progress and likely to change again shortly but that I'd done it something to work off for now. And I'm frustrated that Salai didn't hear me but I'm frustrated at myself even more for not having done it perfectly the first time, as well as being frustrated at myself for not having finished it already and being frustrated at myself because I have too much to do and I'm not sure I can cope with it all. Then I get cross at myself when I shout at Salai. And the circle continues.
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No, Pete, I won't fight with you. If you want me to apologize for hurting your feelings, even if I don't understand where or when I hurt them, then I'll apologize. But it still won't stop me from making further comments in the future about your work, not because I'm dissatisfied with it, but simply because I'm eager to add a stone to your church, that's all.
No need to apologise. Just remember it's not my church, just as it's not your church - it's *our* church. Just don't complain if I put in a temporary wooden structure that I can stand on to put the stones in properly :P
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We're unpaid, and we're hurting our health working like crazy on these things. There's definitely a small hint of pride in what we both do with our lives, I guess...
Definitely pride. I'm proud of what we have achieved so far. I'm proud of the part I've played. Just that with the way things were going, it was getting to be a chore, not something to be proud of, even if the result would be.

This was an unscheduled service interruption. Normal service will be resumed.
 1. It's ironic. I actually hold a qualification in counselling. You'd think I'd be better able to handle this sort of thing. But I can't actually go and see a counsellor because I know all the tricks, all the moves so to speak. The shields go up and the waves of small fighter craft just go splat, rather than firing off proton torpedoes.
 2. Yes, I've been playing Assassin's Creed. Deal with it, or I'll send Ezio or maybe Connor round to... have a word. :P

Re: The hardships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #7, on April 25th, 2013, 08:22 PM »
Being a perfectionist doesn't make live easier.
It's hard to please your self. You tend to forget quicly what great things you accomplished because they get pushed to the background by unfinished things, or things not (yet) quite up to your standard.
Don't allow yourself to get upset by those things, Try to keep in mind that it;s impossible to be perfect in everything and that a day only has 24 hours.
I know it's easier said than done, but's important that you try. Although be aware not to get upset that you can't do that perfectly. <_<
But who am I telling this, your a qualified counceller.
I am not trying to be the wiseguy, above is based on my own experiences.

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
Re: The hardships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #8, on April 25th, 2013, 08:26 PM »
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But who am I telling this, your a qualified counceller.
Not quite, I hold a qualification in it, but it's only part of the way to becoming a fully qualified counsellor. I'd have to do another couple of years of study to get to that point, but around the time that was happening, things in my life changed and that's why I ultimately gave it up - yup, back in 2002, that was actually my career plan and programming was going to remain hobby. It's funny how life changes.
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Being a perfectionist doesn't make live easier.
On the contrary it makes it so much harder because you're always chasing the dream.

I'm just going to take this opportunity to quote Robert Brown of Abney Park fame, he said this yesterday and it seems entirely true.
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A beginning artist thinks, "I hope I can do this."

A novice artists thinks, "I hope I can find some one to look at/read/listen to my art."

A advanced artists think, "I hope I can do as good as my last piece, so people will keep looking at/reading/listening."

A very old artist thinks, "I hope I can (still) do this!"
I'm somewhere in the latter half of that.

Oracle

  • Posts: 78
Re: The hardships of being a perfectionist?
« Reply #9, on April 25th, 2013, 08:59 PM »
You know one of, if not the most key elements in any marriage is communication...

The willingness of both parties to sit @ the table and discuss their situation in its entirety. To address the things that have a tendency to both aggravate and bring delight into their lives.

Striking the balance, meeting each other half way and being totally honest about the predicament and the needs of both in order to move forward as unit and not as a disjointed couple. Having the intelligence and will to not engage in battles of ego. To realize each others worth and re-establish the respect that brought them together in the first instance. To honour the collective works that has been achieved and finally come to the realization that a continuance in the relationship is far better than none @ all.

You have demonstrated a purity that can only be found in the most successful of partnerships. You have displayed a respect for each other and the willingness to progress.

I commend you on your maturity and determination to see the project through.

An inspiration to all.