The following post is from my Tumblr from May 5th, 2011.
Introduction
I’ve spent the past 4 months programming my chops off and trying to retain a good grade in school while doing so. Not that I don’t have good grades, but the programming from one course has absolutely hindered my chances of reaching my potential in my difficult, non-programming courses (*ahem* Biology) – oh, and in another programming course.
In the beginning of the semester, my Visual Basic professor noticed I was doing a good ‘ol job in all the projects and asked me to do something that made me feel as special as Charlie when he got the golden ticket (and an honor that any programmer would jump at); he asked me to create a program for the Student Exposition on April 28th. Immediately, I said yes because – why not? I asked him what he wanted me to submit and he said “anything.” Naturally, I panicked. This is for two reasons:
1.) That’s a LOT of freedom to give to me
2.) That’s TOO much freedom to give to me
Allow me to expand my thinking here. If I even HAD an idea for a program, I would have already been working on it. Unfortunately, every idea I could come up with was sub-par and nothing that would be a challenge, which is what I needed. Likewise, I wanted it to be something people would USE. Naturally, I thought for days.
Cue my OTHER major (Theatre Arts). During the excruciation that was Sound of Music, I was asked to work in the weight gallery. If anybody out there is a theatre major, you either love the weight gallery or you hate it, there’s no in-between. I hated it. For those of you who don’t know, the weight gallery is located about 60-80 feet above the stage. When you’re up there, you must be harnessed in and the people on the floor yell to you to lift heavy bricks to and from each lineset. However, none of these were the reasons why I hated the weight gallery – it was simply too boring. You’re 60 feet in the air and you have nobody to talk to except whoever they stick you with.
View from the weight gallery – There’s a person down there.
One day, whilst sitting in the weight gallery (alone), I got fed up with how long it took the people on the ground to calculate the weight of each lineset and started thinking about how I could improve it. Not that I was fed up with the people – the process was just too long, which is understandable, it’s an important job. Thus began my months of agony and little sleep.
The Business of Life
This semester was, hands-down, the busiest one of my life, and hopefully will never be topped. Not only did Sound of Music, classes, and my TV show (coming soon) suck up about 70% of my time, but other homework (that wasn’t my new baby, “Weight Gallery”) took up about another 10%. This left 20% for food, sleep, and Weight Gallery. Needless to say, I slept maybe 4-5 hours a night and lost over 20 pounds since January.
My C++ class began losing my attention. To be honest, learning 2 different languages at the same time really messes with you. I began writing VB code in C++ and vice-versa. It’s funny when you think about it, but extremely frustrating while it’s happening. I would put random semicolons in bits of VB code, making it give me dozens of errors. Thankfully, Visual Studio 2010 is very good at telling me how terrible of a programmer I can be at times.
For months, I stressed over small errors (forgetting to type “-1” was a huge one… a few times). Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I would have to stop being stupid and start being a real programmer. My typical day went as such:
– Wake up seconds before class
– Show up to class with semi-closed eyes
– Pay as much attention as possible
– Eat something… maybe
– More classes
– Sound of Music until about 8:30 at night
– OR – If it was during tech/show, until about 12:00-1:00 AM
– Fooooooood
– Energy Drinks!
– Shower
– Contemplating on crying
– Suck it up, and program
– Go to bed at 5:00 AM
In the end, I finished my program the night before the expo with about 36-48 hours of work (probably even more), over 1,000 lines of code, and probably just as many facepalms. My work was rightfully reflected in the outcome of people interested: 3 people. Yeah, that last sentence was sarcasm. 3 people looked at my exhibit, and I knew them all. Not that I was expecting everyone to run to me, but whatever. The expo isn’t the end of my program’s life, it’s just unfortunate that nobody noticed it.
You like it? It’s pretty isn’t it? Hard to believe I stressed so hard over something so simple-looking, eh? Well I did.
The Experience
Overall, if I had the opportunity to do this project again, I would [WHICH I’M DOING NOW!]. In order to get this project done, I had to read through future chapters in the book and learn things I didn’t think I’d ever know. As challenging as this project turned out to be, I know it could have been much worse. It was about as challenging as I had hoped it would be. As stressful as it is, it’s extremely fun to get stuck on a problem, stare at the screen for 3 hours and notice that you forgot one letter. This is something that I created from the ground up. It started with one line of code and blossomed into a beautiful, multi-thousand-lines-of-code flower.
Not only was the knowledge extremely useful, but I’m building my career. My professor told me I could use him as a reference whenever I needed, I have a program under my belt that is actually useful (and released!), and I’m recognized by the school as having participated in the exposition. I can actually make a resume that has experience on it, which is something that is incredibly useful.
Closing
So there it is, my semester in a nut-shell. If you’re a theatre technician with a Windows PC, you might as well download the program, it couldn’t hurt anything. 🙂
To download Weight Gallery, click here!
Zach Daily 