💾 Archived View for xavi.privatedns.org › motivation.gmi captured on 2024-02-05 at 09:33:37. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
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So far, I have never used Gemini to express personal feelings, but I assume this protocol has become niche enough so that it is possibly easier to establish a personal connection against anyone reading this. That said, I might plan to write to this gemlog more often, as a way to relieve myself.
I have usually considered myself an impulsive individual. In other words, when I do feel about motivated about a project, I tend to spend as much energy into it as possible, until motivation fades away or I switch to other stuff. Definitely not the best approach to software development, where consistency is key, but it allowed me to get some things done in the way, such as my PS1 video game Airport or my contributions to XMPP client Dino:
A forked version of Dino, a modern XMPP client
Since I was a child, I have always admired older computer hardware. I have always felt people would typically refuse older machines despite being completely up to the task, typically leading to e-waste. To me, it is very sad to see how once-useful hardware is rejected, because of the apparent obsession within our society towards the latest trendy stuff. Apparently, it looks like being enthusiastic about technology means being so only with the *latest* hardware - otherwise, you might get called out as a weirdo.
You know what? I *am* enthusiastic about technology, both old and new! And I feel proud for being able to appreciate older stuff, fix it when it breaks and being able to give it a second life.
I feel this is even more relevant with smartphones and tablets, where the lack of standardization (as opposed to x86 and x86_64 computers) makes upgradeability a nightmare. As a software developer, I feel I have the potential, if not the responsibility, to *create* something new for these machines, something that gives them a reason to still remain useful to somebody.
Also, similarly to how I feel when writing music, writing code is just another way of creating new things, something that no one has ever previously conceived. Such creative aspect behind software development is what caught my interest in the first place, and one of the reasons why now I do it for a living.
Therefore, since last year, I have been steadily working into another project, carefully designed to run on almost all computer hardware that I currently own:
Writing a video game for such a wide variety of hardware requires careful design, considering platform, performance and size constraints. These were some of the key design decisions that were made along the way:
These are the results:
rts, a cross-platform real-time strategy video game
So far, I was able to write a barebones game engine that could run on most of the platform above, and so far I have felt *very* proud of it.
However, something *in me* is keeping from further progress. It might be due to recent big changes in my personal life, or maybe due to a (somewhat unexciting) job, but it's been a long time since I last had a motivation boost about anything programming-related. This is particularly frustrating when I read about well-known developers that never seem to slow down and are capable of pulling great amounts of work done in no time.
It is also true that I do not find as much time as I used to for programming. If that ever happened, it would be late enough to feel tired so I would prefer to lose time watching a few videos or reading a few articles over the web before going to sleep. IMHO creative tasks are better pulled out with a fresh mind, and it's been many times already where I have felt forced to open my favourite IDE, just to do *nothing*, because in fact I did not feel like doing anything productive!
Maybe this irregular time schedule is blocking me from having a routine as a hobbyist developer. Going back to the music analogy, while I have not been able to write any music at home during the last couple of years, we did write a handful of songs as a band, possibly because we rehearse at a fixed schedule, with enough time to play around with new ideas.
Or maybe it's just that I do not find motivation into programming *right now*. To be honest, I have never been able to truly share my passion with other people near me, so programming has always been a solitary task for me.
Maybe I just feel motivated to write to this Gemini capsule. Which makes sense since actually I have been rather quick to write down this somewhat long article, possibly because I feel emotionally attached to it. If so, then I might lose the motivation about it in a couple of weeks, but that is how it's always been, after all.
Would you like to share your thoughts? Contact me!
Article created on December 27th 2022.