It gets better. In increments.

This is going to be partly my retrospective for sprint 9. But not really because no one showed up to test, so that sprint is kind of a wash, and I don’t really want to talk about it because it just makes me depressed. What I do want to talk about is the line of thinking that stopped me from headbutting a circuit breaker with a wet sponge taped to my forehead. So it’s about ten or so days into the sprint, and I have this dread realization: I’m going to have to start programming, and sense we’re all strangers here, know that I take to programming like an octopus takes to a salmon run. But I’ve reached a point in the project where I had done all the designing and paper prototyping that I could do without testing anything, so the only things left to do at this stage are test and code. Now, you might say that I could be drafting the script, getting a better handle on the story, or mapping the progression of the units. But all of those just kick the can down the road, and this is a rather sizable can that can’t really be ignored for too long.

I have to just bite the bullet and start coding. Which I have, and I’m already confused. Day one, I told myself, “Keep it simple; just focus on basic logic. Don’t do anything fancy,” and in two hours, I’ve had over twenty error messages, two crashes, and three complete restarts. Suffice it to say, I have much to learn; and that’s the main takeaway from all this: that I’m willing to learn.

About two years ago, I got into Guilty Gear Strive (and other fighters as well, but not as much); at time of writing, I have over 150 hours in that game, and I’m passable at best with I-no and decent with a handful of other characters. Yet, I keep coming back; I keep playing; and I keep taking the 3-0 thrashings where I did nothing but help the other guy practice his block strings with stride as I keep getting better. Because little by little, I keep getting better. It takes about 250 hours to get good at a fighter and about 10,000 hours to master one. The same goes for any skill.

So here I am. Staring down the mountain that is programming, ready to crawl up it inches at a time. Eventually, inches will turn to feet; feet will turn to yards; yards will turn to miles, and one day, I’ll be looking down from atop that mountain. I just got to keep climbing.