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Visualizing the beat

posted 02 Apr 2010

Ahh Ha! Something in the lesson today really helped for things to click for me. I have been struggling with using a metronome and generally rhythm in general.

But, today Samantha suggested that I internally hum out the tune that I am working on to the beat of the metronome. And that hit me really quick: it is just like anything else I try and figure out; I must visualize the goal and then do it.

I encounter this need to visualize when I look at a bug report. If I look at the bug and then jump into the code straight away I am doomed. I get lost in the syntax, functions and structs.

Instead I first visualize how it should work and based on that write a hypothesis (on paper!) of what is causing the problem. Then when I dive into the code I am thinking: "I need to find how this happens because it is clearly causing the issue." That gives direction and a drive to my code reading so that when I encounter something that is a little off beat I notice it quickly and can revise my hypothesis to keep narrowing in on the issue.

And that is the role of humming to the beat: to make that initial visualization so that when you put bow to string you have an expectation how it should sound so when you screw it up you can find the bug. Ahh ha!

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About

Brandon Philips by Mujtaba Ali

ifup.org is the weblog of Brandon Philips and contains excerpts from my code, work and play.

I write Linux software and work on the systems layer of Linux. In the last two years I have helped to organize Linux Plumbers Conf and Freedom HEC Taipei. It has been rewarding to bring together these communities to discuss current Linux issues.

Robotics is another passion and I had the opportunity to mentor a FIRST Robotics team in Portland recently too. I also continue to work with my friend Ron Jackson to build some neat USB devices for robotics.