Rails, and The Loneliness

Oh The Loneliness.

The loneliness is what my math teacher says comes when you don’t practice doing problems on your own. You’re in class, you follow the examples and everything is fine. But then comes the test, and you’re looking at the problem and The Loneliness hits you. You no longer have your guru and classmates there to help you along. Because of The Loneliness you fail.

Programming, and particularly training classes, are the same way. After my intensive study in Atlanta, with a forced 2 weeks off owing to travel and moving The Loneliness has haunted me as I’ve attempted to get back into Rails. I have a project in mind that will help a friend tremendously, but the how-to is not there.

I know that what I want to do can be done, but instead of expression just pouring out of me like it would be if I were writing in Perl or C++, it’s just not there yet. Instead I look at examples and paste together snippets. This is like writing a ransom note,, clipping letters from disparate sources, instead of typing your demands.

So I have the frustrating feeling of wanting to break into a sprint ( or a nice leisurely jog ), but not being able to because each time I break into a rhythm I go all full stop and have to bust out books, ask questions, make tests, think some more, and then add 2 more lines, and keep running. Experience is a cruel teacher that way.

I poured the better part of the weekend into the basics and got NOWHERE. Come Monday, it dawned on my what to do, and 3 hours later I had done what I needed. The ways of the Tao are mysterious.