c. scott andreas

Often when I’m feeling frustrated or burnt out when working on a project, I’ll take a break to experiment with a new technology, language, or framework.

After all, the cure for too work is…more?  Maybe I’m doing this wrong.

But playing with new ideas and platforms is a great way to break out of a funk.  After finding myself burnt out working on a side project, I started experimenting with building an iPhone app (for about the fourth time).  While my previous attempts left me frustrated and feeling helpless against the powers of CGRect and NSWhatever, things began to click this time.

I spent the entire weekend hammering this out, and ended up refactoring significant critical portions of Sunago.org in the process.  By Sunday night, Sunago got a RESTful API and an iPhone app with basic CRUD functionality powered by (and updating) a remote data source was working great.  I was still ignorant, but invigorated.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a proper polyglot, but I do believe that these experiments have left me a better programmer.

In another, I abandoned a planned roadmap for a weekend and found myself hell-bent on migrating Sunago to Ruby 1.9/YARV and got it running on JRuby to boot.  Though Monday came with another feature unimplemented, the application itself emerged stronger and more portable while I became more acquainted with the intricacies of various Ruby implementations.

During another weekend, I hatched a secret project with Matt King and hammered out a prototype.  I admit that I’ve been grossly delinquent on the follow-through (sorry, Matt) - but learned a ton experimenting with unfamiliar protocols, microframeworks and communication platforms (more on this soon).

I’m reviving this blog to keep track of these experiments and hopefully share something valuable in the process.

Enjoy.