retro html formatted by nom
comments/suggestions to: mjb at nomlang dot org
Fortune is like a woman: if you reject her today, do not expect to meet with her tomorrow. Napoleon
I have started lots of things that I haven't finished. A law degree, and various software projects. Pep and Nom are not really finished, but at least they seem useful and interesting. This post is about getting bogged down while writing code, and why it happens.
Progess on any hobby project depends on 2 factors: motivation and the difficulty of progressing. Motivation often comes from “how well it is going so far” . And the difficulty of progressing is often related to how complex the code already is, and how easy it is to add to it. There is a dichotomy between power and beauty. Sometimes we code for the beauty of the ideas, and sometimes because we think what we are doing is or will become powerful or useful or lucrative. Normally I start of enchanted by the beauty of the idea and then get slowly seduced by it’s power-potential.
My work on pep/nom/syntagma and the FORTH virtual machine for
pep is sporadic and at times just not as compelling as making
plywood boxes 30cm wide, 30cm high and 60cm long.