Perfect is the enemy of good

My interest in blogging used to go like this:

• I want to write a blog
• I start writing a static site generator
• I get bored and give up

I am familiar with the Web enough that I want full control over how my blog is made. In trying to do this I would lose sight of what I actually wanted to do and I'd end up back where I started. This idea of doing things perfectly was the biggest roadblock towards having my own site, and it's only when i got rid of this idea that I could finally make something. I picked an existing static site generator named Marmite, and I let it generate the HTML for me.

I had the same problem with writing. When I started writing a diary I would open to a new page and lament that I was about to ruin such a beautiful empty page with my chickenscratch handwriting. It's only when I got rid of the idea that my words weren't good enough that I could finally keep a diary. As I kept writing my penmanship improved to the point where I can take pride in how I write.

I'm still trying to shake off this feeling with code. What if I was supposed to use ’LinkedList’ instead of ’ArrayList’? What if I was supposed to use Spring? What if I wasn't supposed to use Spring? I'm really trying to dig into Java and I keep running into these doubts. All I can do is push past them and keep writing Java until they go away.

Perhaps this is the other side to how people see AI. I made it so it's bad, as opposed to computer made it so it's good.