In the past few months, I’ve allowed myself to slip. I haven’t been making many public commits, nor discussing much where others can see. It has me feeling like a bodybuilder who hasn’t touched a set of weights in the same amount of time. My work and my writing has atrophied. My ability to maintain code that other people depend upon has suffered, and my ego has, as well. Time to sharpen up.
The first part of this new commitment is that I’ll be making a minimum of 3 commits a week to rFeedParser, no matter how small. This one is a stepping stone to taking on more of a workout, and It gives me time to reacquaint myself with the code base. rFP has weird and hairy parts in it because the problem it was solving was weird and hairy. However, there are a good number of ugly parts that were created because a) I wrote it with the Python version in the next window over causing me to write with a strong Pythonic accent; and b) I wasn’t as skilled in Ruby as I am now.
The module hierarchy alone proves I was diving in and not giving a fuck. At a certain point, I was just trying to get it to goddamn work and not caring what kind of hack-and-slash maneuvers I had to pull off to make it happen. With the distance from the problem and the clearer head I have now, I can piece together how it should be done.
The second part is a commitment to one commit a week to one of my public side projects. Right now, this consists mainly of the strictly-for-fun-and-I’m-keeping-it-that-way-fuckers framework I’m writing called Recess. Everyone writes a web framework, and I’m going to be That Guy, too.
I’ll try not to be too snooty about it, but if the framework turns out well (or, at all, really), I probably will be. Like I’ve said before, my ego knows no bounds. But, remember! It’s just for fun. Really. Really.
As my plans and projects grow and adapt and interests wax and wane, there will, of course, be a call to change this commitment. This two-part commitment is only the first of what will be a series of changing, and, likely, growing vows to myself. Look to see a lot more work from me.