Tuesday, July 18, 2017

The failure to a win

My last post was about not being able to get some code to work. I declared it a failure. A failure that I should learn from. I am here, a couple weeks later, to say that I did learn something from the whole experience. I think most of us have seen the comic, or a similar comic as what I have below


That was exactly what happened except it wasn't a semi-colon. I was missing two words and an equal sign, Mode=TwoWay, where I was giving my binding information. In that particular XAML file, I was not using Mode=TwoWay in any other lines of code. However, I did use it on other pages. Why did I miss this one piece?

I came back to my solution a week later with new eyes. It took me about 15 minutes to see what my issues was. I add Mode=TwoWay and, presto!, my code is working as I expected. What was it about taking a step back from the code that helped me see what was missing?

The important lesson I feel I came away with, is that sometimes it is good to have a fresh set of eyes take a look at the code. In my case, it was taking a week off allowed me to get a fresh perspective, but we can't always do that at work. Yet, it can still be important to get a fresh set of eyes.

We look at code all day and may start missing pieces that would actually help solve our issues. Making sure we know when to ask for help and get another person looking at the code can be very beneficial.

Take that "week" off  and get fresh eyes to look at your code.

Here is a screen shot of my minimal viable product (I know the UI isn't great that will be coming...soonish). Now to see if I can get some services to the online movie providers (not looking so great, I have only been able to find an API to Plex Servers and the rest of the providers are either hidden really well, don't exist, or I am searching for the wrong things).

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." - James Thurber