My previous game, Squiggle Squid, is the best programming I have ever done. I don’t mean that I achieved any amazing programming feats or even that my code is well organized. I simply didn’t make many mistakes. I did very little refactoring or recoding. While this may not seem like a big deal to someone who programs every day, it is for someone like me, who only programs a few hours a week if at all, it’s quite an accomplishment.
The secret to my success was having a newborn baby in the house. This may sound crazy that the most productive programming I ever did was while tending to the needs of a newborn but it’s true. If you have never had a baby, here is the schedule: they sleep maybe 1 1/2 hours and then are awake for about 1 1/2 hours. While they are awake you feed them and cuddle with them. And much of the time they are asleep, you are cuddling them too.
This means I never had more than an hour or so to actually program. However, in the interim, I had a lot of time to think about programming. I would often sit in a dark room with a tiny baby in my lap just thinking about what I needed to accomplish next and how I would do it. In between all the admiring of my new daughter, of course.
This is important because my current project has been a nightmare of mistakes and recoding. I finally came to the realization of what I have been doing wrong., too much time programming at the keyboard and not enough time programing in my head.
Very good point! Thanks for sharing.
Someone said: The best program design happens when your computer is turned off.