Constellation

[Andre Garzia]

On Oct 21, 2005, at 4:44 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> It is a fundamental Truth of the Universe (when you reach my  
> advanced stage of life you can even afford to pontificate now and  
> again) that everything takes longer than you think it will even  
> when you take into account that everything takes longer than you  
> think it will.
>

I have told you my theory that if every project takes longer than  
imagined than you just go stacking them like domino tiles and hope  
that when you finish a easy one they will all be solved in chain  
reaction! :-)


jokes apart, I think the best approach to get something done is
1) write a spec, something to guide you, like what problem you're  
trying to solve (thats an important question), how should your app  
behaves.
2) Adopt modular paradigm like model-view-controller, something to  
split GUI from code so that your code will be portable and maintainable.
3) Follow deadlines, even if you don't have one, go and create  
artificial one with punishments like: if I pass 10 of october without  
an alpha version of my new superduper rev game I shall be honor bound  
to drink a cup of orange juice with 3 spoons of salt....
4) Always research, chances are someone created something similar to  
what you're trying to do, see how they did it, learn from others. For  
example, I love outliners and am trying to build a little one for  
personal use in Rev, I just downloaded everything from MORE to  
OmniOutliner and checked... decided I need to learn more.... :-)

at least this is what my workflow looks... and yes, it still takes  
longer than planned.

andre