What I'm Doing

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Christmas Time is Near...and Programming

Wow, only a week to go until Christmas! I don't know if it's because I've been so busy with the wedding website or what, but Christmas has really snuck up on me. Thank God for ThinkGeek; I can still order some stuff from there and, hopefully, get it by Christmas.

Maybe it's because I've hardly been in the stores, but I think this is the first year I've not gotten sick of Christmas carols before Christmas. I do know I feel much saner for not going shopping during this time of year.

I have had my own insanity-inducing activities, though. Back when Kristen and I first started planning the wedding, I had the idea to build a website for the wedding so that everyone who gets an invitation can RSVP online at the site. I was going to build a little web app that they could log into and select whether or not they were going.

After a few false starts, I finally have the website up, but I hadn't really gotten much done on the RSVP app. Last week, though, I started getting emails from people wondering when it would be available so they could RSVP. So, this past weekend and week, I've been working on it in earnest. The scary part of this is, I'm learning this stuff as I go. It's actually become a rarity that I've spent the majority of the time I've slept in my bed. Either I fall asleep at the computer or I make it to the couch. I would share how late I've been awake most nights, but I honestly don't know.

Now, some might read this and think I'm complaining. I'm not. I haven't had this much fun on the computer in a long time. Granted, this is the kind of fun I can only handle (physically and mentally) for a week or two at a time. I can't do this constantly. But, when I can, it's a blast. Solving problems, new challenges, late-night coding sessions...this is why I'm a programmer.

4 comments:

KTP said...

I do not know the first thing about programming but writing an app sounds difficult so I don't envy you!

wezlo said...

Wait, don't you have a couple of weeks until Christmas?

And late-night hacking.....mmmmmm....

CoffeeZombie said...

No, we have Christmas next week (Dec. 25). I guess if we were Old Calendar, we wouldn't have it for a couple weeks.

The main difference, IIRC, between the New Calendar and the Western Calendar is that Easter is still calculated differently (we'll be celebrating Easter a month after you guys next year).

Speaking of late night hacking, last night was bad. I was coding and coding and finally got up to get some water only to realize it had suddenly become 3:30am, and I wasn't even tired! I had make myself stop coding and go to bed...

CoffeeZombie said...

bootgun: The app I'm writing right now is relatively simple. The difficulty is that I'm having to learn everything as I go, since I've never done an entire webapp on my own before. And this is without pretty javascript!