Writing and things

When you figure it out.

It may not be the best idea, but I know that everyone makes stupid errors. It also feels really awesome to figure out what the stupid error was and fix it!

Mine goes like this. I’ve followed along in a HackingwithSwift course on a simple SwiftUI ToDo list app. Finished, done, lovely. I started another solo project, and thought “Oh, the Navigation on this will be very similar to the ToDo app I just did, I’ll use that as a nice template.” And I thought I made all the correct changes to my data model, my main ContentView, and everything! The dreaded “White Screen of NOTHING” greeted me when I launched the app.

Nothing. Natta. Zilch. Not even the NavigationTitle string. Just a blank white thing.

So I have to kick in the bug squash mode. Data Model? Nope, it’s fine. ContentView? I don’t think so? Oh. Oh Justin. You didn’t inject the NavigationView into the WindowGroup of the app’s ‘@main’ struct. Wow. Fixed.

IT WORKS.

I mean. It’s an odd feeling when you feel both silly and accomplished at the same time. I think that is a very interesting aspect of learning to Code and being in the Software Development field. I never really had this same feeling in college studying music.

 

Don’t rely on Future You

Don’t rely on your future self to follow through on what present self wants you to do. You’re going to have to also not rely on “motivation” to help you develop good coding/developer habits.

Future Justin is going to get up at 7:00am and meditate for 20 minutes before showering and getting ready for the day. Future Justin is going to come home after an 8 hour day and work for another 2 – 3 hours on coding projects so he can have better skills.

Like hell he/I will.

When Future Justin becomes Present Justin at 7:00 and the bed is comfortable and sleep coats your will and motivation, your real motivation becomes “keep sleeping because it’s comfortable.” When Future Justin becomes Present Justin gets home from an 8 hour day of dealing with people, questions, and issues the last thing he’ll want to do is work for another minute on a computer.

So where does that leave me? Well, without “should”-ing all over myself the only thing is to create conditions that lead to better habits. Instead of going back to bed after feeding the dog, I go directly to the meditation cushion to start that habit. Instead of zoning out at the TV, after changing out of work stuff I grab my lap board and start a pomadoro timer to work and break for a set amount of time.

So tldr; f*cK your motivation. Develop good habits.

This shouldn’t be so difficult

Beginners are inclined to give rise to all kinds of thoughts; they have pain…and don’t know how to undergo the training.

Master Hsu Yun “What is a hua t’ou?”

I’ve been terrified to write, blog, or try to make any kind of contribution. Like so terrified that in the almost three years that I’ve been learning Swift code, I haven’t made any kind of contribution. I know the why of it, but that’s hasn’t been enough to actually push me off the cliff to write anything. Until today.

So this post is my promise both myself and you (whoever you are). I will write things and publish them here. So what will I write about? Primarily I want this space to be a blog about tech, learning, and my experience with these things. Occasionally I may write more personal thoughts, but I don’t want this space to be too much about that. I have other, not so public, places to do that. Mostly I’d like to explore the realm of learning to write Swift code and creating apps for macOS and iOS platforms. Hopefully what I write here can be helpful or useful to other people. I also hope that, if people read my word vomit, it can bring me help also.

Feel free to say hi! Find me on Mastodon: @JustinSeal@iosdev.space

This is what it is

So something happened to my WordPress installation. So here I am starting over. Again. It’s okay. Things happen, and I should learn to back-up my site frequently.