Don't let the subject line fool you.  It's real.

After eight months of design, coding, debugging and tweaking, I have finally
finished by latest programming effort.  Typically in the past, when I finish
something I have devoted my work days (and nights) to, I seem to suffer from
a kind of emptiness that I jokingly refer to as Post Programming
Depression...but it is very real.  It's like, I've invested all my time and
energy into finishing my project and all of sudden, it's done (well, the
major bulk of it is...support, improvements and bug fixes never end).

Now what?  <g>

Do any of you other chaps suffer from this kind of thing?

For what it's worth, it's a desktop weather monitor...and truth be told, it
would have never been completed to the point where I was satisfied with it
without the various help of you pros here in this forum.  All my quirky
questions since I joined have been for this project, so a mighty big thanks
to those of you who took the time to work these things out with me.  I
mentioned all of you who did in the documentation with your respective web
sites, most notably Mr. Karl Peterson (you sir, have rightly earned the
priviledge of being called "the best").  My way of saying, "Thank you."  :-)

I've learned so many new techniques and improvements on older ones between
the finishing of the project prior this one and now...I think I'll be taking
that knowledge back to my "flagship" program and applying it to that, to
make it more powerful than it is now.  I hope that you guys (and gals?)
continue to be understanding of my novice in the year to come.  You folks
are the best and I'm glad to know the lot of you.

Respectfully,

Kevin Provance
www.tpasoft.com

Not sure I understand the question - my application is NEVER finished. Ok, I
make new releases and send them out to customers, but I have a development
list as long as my arm, so it's never finished. In fact, I've been working
on our 'flagship' application for 11 years now and there has never been a
time when I could look at it and say "it's finished".

Each time I make a new release, I immediately go to the development list and
see what it needs to do next; I start to prioritise those changes and start
asking my user-base what they want next. Added to that, Microsoft tend to
keep me busy too - the conversion from VB3 to VB6 (yes, I missed out all the
other versions) was a major exercise that is now to be repeated as I
re-write for C#.

I think the trick is not to get in to the "It's finished" mentality... it's
just beginning.

And, before anyone puts me down as the "happy clappy" sort, I've spent most
of my life depressed about one thing or another. I'm a miserable git at the
best of times... just not about software.

Steve



Show quoteHide quote

Show quote Hide quote      I think that's what might be called existential gap.
People tend to create goals, both long term and short
term, and then define their situation by those goals. It
provides a way to avoid facing existential gap - that
nagging, peripheral awareness that there is no confirmable
significance on any level of experience; that all experience
is impalpable and lacks any absolute meaning.

    Investing meaning into projects and goals creates a
semblance of solid, objective reality that we can use
as a reference point. ("I look forward to getting up today
because I can finish my project...and won't that be something!")
It makes life seem straightforward and it makes
significance seem obvious.

   The sense of depression happens because there's a
brief lag between acheiving one goal and cooking up a
new one. In that brief interlude we are meeting life more
directly, but we panic at the sudden lack of defined meaning
and feel a sense of pointlessness. It's a state of mind that is
actually more alive than what came before, but since we've
become accustomed to measuring our experience with
the relative reference points created in our daily life, the
sudden void makes us feel empty, and we call it depression.
(Similarly, sudden loss or sudden change also destroys
our personal "story line" and leaves us disoriented.)
So then we quickly cook up some new meaning in our lives.

    That gap state can actually happen after any situation has
finished. There can be a flash of "depression" in the
moment after taking the last bite of a meal, for instance.
("Hmm. That's done. What do I do now?")
But it's usually only noticed at the end of bigger projects,
especially when one has been manic or deeply involved
with that project.

    Your choices:

1) Try to roll over and go back to sleep. In other words,
start a new project.

2) Try happy pills, such as a neurotransmitter-reuptake
inhibitor.

3) Start wearing black and hang out in coffee shops,
reading Kafka and discussing Futility.

4) In one way or another, look further into the nature
of existential panic, perhaps resisting the temptation
to quickly start a new project of some kind.

Show quote Hide quote Kevin,

Take up fishing. Not only will it give you something to do when a big
project completes, it'll give you something to look forward to while you
work. Promise yourself a week's fly-fishing in Canada* when you get the
product out the door and you'll end the project a happy man.

Cheers,

Tony.

* Or a day tiddler-bashing in the nearest lake if you suspect the project
might not be quite lucrative enough to start gallivanting around the worlds
on the proceeds...

I see what you mean. Although I think that this sensation can be
generalized for any project where time and energy has been
invested. I have a back log of projects (not all programming projects)
to keep me busy at least three years and even now I keep getting
new ideas that I jot down and hope to implement some day :-)

So when I finish one project, I already have another ready to go.
In some cases, I just can't wait and start new projects before I
finish the one I am presently working on which causes me to have
various projects open at once. As some one else mentioned, a
programming project is usually never finished, but I do see an
important milestone when the project goes live for the first time,
giving the developer a sensation of it being "finished". Once that
is done, a new project starts that picks up where the previous
one left off, tweaking, debugging, maintaining and enhancing the
existing project.

Regards,
Saga

Show quoteHide quote

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