Why coding things takes so long

Work distribution has been... peculiar, this iteration. Observe.

• Day 1: Completed all the two-box models I had scheduled for the iteration. Yay!
• Nothing happens for a while.
• Day 10: I've got so much time on my hands. Maybe I should do more work?
  Yes! I shall complete all the two-box models for the entire condo! Piece of cake!
  (writes down the task in the TODO list, then goes to sleep)
• Nothing happens for a while.
• Last day: Frantically creates two-box models for one extra room.
  Two more rooms left. Time's up; game over!

Well, now we know where most of the time went during this project.


For the next iteration, we intend to waste time in a totally different way. Because this time, it's a programming project! When programming, I think we tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time learning new libraries. Case in point: we want to parse OBJ files.

OBJ is a very simple file format for 3D meshes. Nadya asked me to look up how the OBJ format represents points on disk, and to write some pseudo-code for her. Well, I'm afraid I will again be done with my part of the work on the first day, because the format is very, very simple:

# this is a comment

# List of Vertices, with (x,y,z[,w]) coordinates, w is optional and defaults to 1.0.
v 0.123 0.234 0.345 1.0
v ...

The format is so simple that I don't really need to write down pseudo-code, but I will do so anyway, because I have a point to make.

m := create 3DS Max mesh object
for each line is the OBJ file:
  if the first character is 'v':
    split the line into words.
    x := second word
    y := third word
    z := fourth word
    add the point (x, y, z) to m's point list.

And that's it! That's the entire pseudo-code, because for this iteration, we're only interested in importing the points, not the faces.


Now, the algorithm is trivial, but we are still scheduling an entire 3 weeks to actually implement it. Why? Because we are not familiar with 3DS Max's API. We already know that the documentation contains errors. There might be all kinds of catches we haven't thought of and which we'll need to debug through. Really, the algorithm is trivial, but this has no incidence on the amount of time it will take to implement it! Familiarity with the necessary API is the dominant factor.

I feel like this is very representative of the work I do every day as a programmer. The reason coding things takes so long is not the complexity of the algorithms (they are often trivial), it's not that we work with low-level languages which force us to deal with unnecessary details (although we often do), it's mainly that we need to learn how to use new libraries all the time.

Well! I'll have a lot of time to ponder about that problem during the next three weeks. Because I'm responsible for the pseudo-code, and that part is done!


Oh, and I should also finish those two-box models. There are what, two rooms left? I think I'll wait until two days before the deadline...