Relief
Category: Navel Gazing...
Posted Wednesday, June 16, 2004 at 10:23 PM [GMT-6]

Late this afternoon I solved a tricky (for me) programming problem related to a client's website redesign. I had been putting it off for a couple of weeks, attending to every other detail I could think of, until I had nothing left to do but to attack it.

As I've written before, I'm not a programmer, and even the simplest of programming techniques often makes my eyes cross. But I am a problem solver, and if I can find where someone addressed a similar issue, I can usually deconstruct and reconstruct to make it fit my situation.

In this case, I had to resort to a <gasp> flowchart just to figure out how the chain of events needed to unfold. When's the last time you drew a flowchart for something other than an academic exercise? For me, I'd have to give the answer in terms of decades.

Of course, that was the easy part. Getting the code (PHP, in this case) to actually conform to the flowchart was the challenge. But things fell into place rather quickly -- almost easily, in fact -- and I think the client will be pleased when he sees the final product.

Just as important, I'm pleased. When you get to be my age, the ability to meet new challenges is not only important from a professional standpoint, but also from a personal perspective. It's a way of reaffirming that obsolescence has yet to take hold in my life. Perhaps it will someday; perhaps that's inevitable. But not today.