December 16, 2011

  • Programming

    The trouble with delimiting days by midnights is that my best work hours, which extend from dinner until 3 in the morning or so, make it hard to notice midnights.

    I started my last programming assignment around 3 in the morning yesterday morning, with 23 hours before it was due, and despairing of ever finishing on time. (It's actually been extended until tomorrow, but I didn't know that at the time.) Assignments often range in the neighborhood of 50 hours, so even if I programmed nonstop, I might expect to finish halfway. I went to bed a good whiles after the sun rose, and then I woke up.

    All was dark and still.

    Frantic, I grabbed at my cell phone for the time: five minutes until 18:00. That left just eight hours to finish programming, and I wanted to have dinner besides. I've been programming frantically since then. Python is a wonderful language, where things are actually simple, and lists can be made of anything in the world (even other lists!), and memory never needs be allocated and then freed. But in the midst of all that, midnight passed quietly by, and I missed another day.

    From now on, perhaps I will try to blog as early as possible each day about the previous day, to better the likelihood of catching each day.