Last week, I asked the question Where does your sense of accomplishment come from? I’m reminded of this because of a related experience I just had.
I’ve been working on some code that will become public and when a new offering launches on the Yahoo! Developer Network in the not too distant future. I wrote my Perl code using a mix of reading the documentation and translating the existing PHP examples. I built some basic sanity and error checking in along the way and then tried it out.
It Just Worked.
And that was immensely satisfying. Not just because it confirmed that I hadn’t completely lost the ability to write code, but because there was no frustration, confusion, or ambiguity involved. The service did just what the docs said it would do and my code handled the edge cases I intended it to.
It’s so rare that things work this way in other parts of life that I really had to stop and enjoy the moment. It was then that I realized that this was a completely unexpected trigger for that sense of accomplishment I had written about earlier.
[I’m sure someone will insert the standard “that’s why I use a Mac” response in the comments.]
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Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.
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