I have a project that's needed some improvements for a while. I had been putting it off, because I thought it would be very difficult to get everything done well, and I was also waiting for a colleague whose input would have some (extremely minor, but good to have as an excuse) impact on how I implemented the changes. Finally, the colleague's comments came in, and I got started.
In about three hours, I had everything done that I had wanted to do. And tested. And this wasn't just a single thing—I had to write several new helper methods, add additional database code, write a few new templates, tweak a stylesheet. My errors during the process were all simple things, like missing semicolons.
I'm looking at the working result and feeling happily flabbergasted that it all worked so smoothly.
And I'm trying to figure out how it happened. Is it that I spent months thinking about it instead of doing it, so that when the time came to code, I had already worked it out? Was it actually a simple process, and I had just convinced myself it was hard? Did I become a better programmer in the few months since I planned to start?
Whatever it is, it's a good feeling. Now, if only I could do something so that this is the way I work all the time....
