Introducing DevLog
Update on November 12, 2015: DevLog is considered being replaced by Umbrella.
Before talk about this DevLog, I feel it is necessary to say a little bit about DoleeArts first.
DoleeArts is the name of my side project. It came from a simple idea: I should really start to make something, anything, but seriously, with love and long term commitment. It is actually not one project, but a series of projects.
So what are they? Well, first thing is this website. It is built from scratch using Go and Bootstrap, and is hosted on App Engine. It has a home page, the Linked List(inspired by Daring Fireball), and now the DevLog. You can also subscribe site-wide updates via this feed.
Besides the website, I also decided to make video games. After taking a game design course at my graduate school, I was fascinated by this industry. I can’t wait to step into it.
Currently I’m working on a mobile game called Memory Cube. I don’t have much experience on making games now and this is only my very first official game, so I don’t expect it to be very attractive. My ultimate goal is just to finish and release it, and at the same time to learn game development from this process.
However, the development stopped every now and then. It has been almost a year since I started the game, and I still haven’t finished it yet.
Why? Why on earth can’t I just fucking finish it?
Lately I find out it is actually hard to make progress on anything if I’m just in my house staring at my computer screen and only thinking on my own, especially when the game is simple and I started to suffer from aesthetic fatigue.
After weeks of procrastination and randomly reading other developers’ blogs, I realized that writing is a good potential solution to this issue. One can be benefited from writing in many different ways. But for me, the most important one is it plays the role of commitment to my audiences. Of course, the most important (and likely the only, because of my poor linguistic performance and competence) audience is myself. I believe I will be unconsciously influenced by this public commitment, and actually be pushed forward.
So, here is DevLog. My writings on the progress of my side projects, DoleeArts.
In the next post I will talk about Memory Cube. Stay tuned.
∞ On Apple Employees
Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson wrote on August 22, 2013:
Some Silicon Valley recruiters and former Apple employees at rival companies say they are seeing more Apple resumes than ever before, especially from hardware engineers, though the depth and breadth of any brain-drain remains difficult to quantify, especially given the recent expansion in staff numbers. “I am being inundated by LinkedIn messages and emails both by people who I never imagined would leave Apple and by people who have been at Apple for a year, and who joined expecting something different than what they encountered,” said one recruiter with ties to Apple.
Like Om Malik said about Yahoo, “forget the products”. It’s the employees who decide the future of a company.
∞ Just Fucking Do It
You drive to the office dreading your day, but you drive home with a dream… “One day I’m going to build a startup. One day I’m going to finish that side-project. One day I’m going to launch that thing.”
But that one day never comes.
Why can’t you just fucking do it?
Yes, why can’t I just fucking do my side projects? > Here’s the secret: they all have partners. This made me think. Why writing about your project in early stage helps? It has the same underling reason as doing it with a partner. ♥
∞ A Tip on OmniFocus
Ben Waldie has a tip on OmniFocus:
What I really want, however, is something that will pull out recently completed tasks and summarize them in Evernote, my note management app of choice. This way, I can maintain a historical log of my progress, and pull out summaries of completed tasks to send to clients. Since this type of integration isn’t built into OmniFocus or Evernote, I wrote an AppleScript to do it.
The only thing I miss from OmniFocus is a long-lasting daily completed task view. Yes, you can create perspectives to view the completed tasks. But they will be easily deleted at some point. With this tip, I am able to leave my footprints somewhere. Long lasting. And inspiring.
∞ Do Things, Write About It
Matt Swanson wrote on August 11, 2013:
All I did was “Do things and write about it”…and you should too.
Yes, I should really start writing too.
July 4th at SF
July 4th at SF.
∞ Zero Notifications
Joel Gascoigne wrote on January 07, 2013:
… should try disabling all notifications on my iPhone
Tried this strategy for a month, what did I miss because of no notifications? Nothing at all. And what did I get? One level of freedom and productivity.
∞ How Does a Small Design Detail Effect Overall Product Feels
This one small change made a big difference in how the app feels. Rather than trying to be smart and guessing what you might want for each row, we erred on the side of containment and predictability.
This is so true.
∞ If-less Programming
Andrei Lisnic's If-less programming:
I was amazed how Misko Hevery explained that (a lot of) ifs can be a smelly thing in a Object Oriented language.
But, before we get into that problem, the (widely understood definition of) OOP is a lie at the first place. The probably only good thing about it is that, just like the joke about C++, it created a new software industry.
Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle
Bret Victor, an incredible guy, his incredible work, and his way of living a life.