It has been a bit too quiet on the front. Thought I would use this opportunity to mention that I am still working my way through the mire of learning a new language. The sad thing about this is my productivity has been cut to nearly nothing which explains why I haven’t posted anything of any consequence in the last few weeks. This is entirely due to the fact I think I should be more capable than I actually am.
Lately, an average day goes a bit like this. First, I load up my most recent Objective C project and hit ‘build’ to remind myself where I left off the night before. 95% of the time, the night before ended because I couldn’t figure out the source of a new bug. This means 95 out of a 100 times, when I start my day, I am facing a huge hurdle that I couldn’t make my way around the day before. This is especially difficult on a Monday that finds me getting over the flu.
I check the error message to remind myself that it is still as foreign a sentence as any I have ever seen. These error messages usually contain one or two words that I don’t even know the meaning of. By lunch, I have scratched my head into a fit of frustration and decide the best thing I could do now is to reread a couple chapters from the Objective C book or iPhone Development book.
Sadly, this can have a negative effect on my work flow because after I breeze through a couple chapters, I start thinking I should know enough to figure out my bug. The book examples are so incredibly easy! So back to the main project I go only to end up exactly where I was when I started the day. Confused and annoyed.
Today’s bug is particularly frustrating because there are no error messages to decipher. My project builds with no errors or warnings, the simulator pops up and runs the application, and all I see is a blank black screen.
Black.
Why is it black? It should be either white or red. Those are the two test background colors for the two views I am trying to swap between. But nope. Black. Error free and yet completely broken.
Its double frustrating because I thought I was attempting something that would be easy. I had a project that compiled and I simply wanted to make a flip-side with some sliders and buttons so I could play around with the variables controlling my application. There are plenty of examples of this behavior. There are a couple chapters dedicated to making this happen. But somewhere along the way, I managed to break the project. Perhaps it is time to start again from scratch?
Once I get to the point where stuff starts to make sense and things start to fall nicely into place, I am guessing I am going to have a ton of updates. Until then, it is going to be a period of quiet learning for me. This weekend was all Excedrin and soup so I found myself watching a lot of Discovery Channel and Science Channel shows. I find myself jealous of Daniel Tammet (showcased in a documentary called ‘Brainman’) who was able to learn Icelandic in one week. He could probably learn Objective C in a couple hours. Bastard.