I’m coming to terms with the idea that Trendwatch is going to be more of a hobby project rather than something into which I fully commit my time and energy. And so, a few months after my previous post, I’m coming around for another swing at it.
During 2023 Q2 I had gone to what I initially called “multiple rounds of refactoring” and could probably be better described as “multiple rounds of rearchitecting”. Although I had much of the code working, I just wasn’t satisfied with the quality and readability of the code design.
Perfection vs exellence
Am I stuck in an impossible cycle of Perfection vs Excellence? The article “Excellence VS Perfection: 5 Basic Differences” differentiates the two thusly,
Excellence is when you work hard at the things that matter to you. Excellence is a personal goal or act. It doesn’t matter to the world whether you are excellent or not. It’s something you decide.
Perfection is when you try to fit some exterior idealized perception of what is the best in each situation. With perfectionism as your goal, your success is in the hands of others, and you set yourself up for failure. The milestones keep moving, so you never reach satisfaction.
https://www.developgoodhabits.com/excellence-perfection/
In thus case, I am setting a particular standard for myself. I’ll know when I’ve reached it and I know I haven’t reached it yet.
The same article says,
Excellence is about being successful by adapting, pushing according to your abilities, ingenuity, and resources. When life takes a turn, you buckle up and weather the detour like a boss, because you know it’s not about being perfect—it’s about achieving success, by your standard.
And there you go. Excellence is about achieving success by my own standard.
Behat
When I was first exposed to Behat, I found the experience intimidating. The articles I found on integrating Behat into my Laravel projects talked about requiring Mink and the Selenium driver, and it all seemed so complicated for what I wanted to do and where I was at, at the time.
Since then, and have avoided Behat.
As time went on and my fumblings with TDD became more complicated and more convoluted. I stumbled on another video about Behat and BDD, and I realized that as I was evolving my TDD tests I was making them look more and more like Behat tests. My big aha moment was realizing that I did not need Mink or Selenium; what Behat offered out of the box suited the style of testing I was evolving towards.
Goals for 2024
I’ve been pretty territorial and possessive about my source code, and have been avoiding putting it into github. It’s my intellectual property and I’m not putting it on a public site where everyone can see it, I’ve been telling myself.
Uhm, yeah, right. How about I just get over myself. I’ve decided I’ll be putting it on github as one of my goals for 2024.
That and posting more frequently on my blog, sharing my learnings and my challenges.