Weeks of coding can save hours of reading

I ran into the pun ‘Weeks of coding can save hours of planning’ somewhere on the FileMaker community forum (now the Claris community forum). Found it hilarious! Today, I realized that I have been way too eager to come up with smart solutions for programming problems and started working before searching. It is a type of hubris.

I was busy writing something smart about exporting data. When I was halfway, I thought, hmmm maybe I should see if others have not already written something about it. And sure enough, they had. Moreover, they had come up with much more sophisticated solutions than I could ever dream up. I will spare you the details, … well, actually, I will not, but they will come in a separate post.

It is the second time in a year that I am reminded of the fact that I am not educating myself in my own profession. The first time, was at a conference where someone asked after my presentation, ‘why don’t you use slide controls?’. If you are not working with FileMaker, it does not really matter what they are, but they are a thing I should have known about but did not. That would have saved me a two days of programming and beginners’ embarrassment.

Mind you, part of me does not regret that I didn’t know about them, because I did manage to solve a problem, all by myself, and I thoroughly enjoy such work.

Still, from now on, I will start my days with reading up for half an hour on whatever could be coming in handy and keeps me up to date with the progress that others are so generously sharing!