There are two types of software.

Those that you choose to use, and those that your boss chooses for you.

hmm

The “only way to do it” is sometimes painful. But if there are dollars to be made between those button clicks and some frustration, I will happily click them. Hopefully in the right order.

If I have a choice though, I will choose the program that keeps me in the “zone” for as long as possible. Every second I feel like I am waiting on the machine; is one more second I’m likely to change tasks or get distracted from what I’m actually in your program for.

There is some number… of millisecond lag tolerance. This is the most important metric and a balancing act with the value you are creating. How much of the program’s feature plays in your cash generating mechanisms? How long am I willing to wait? Remember I’m not just a user of a novel feature in your app. It is part of an entire flow that you will never see.

In the craft of turning dirt to dollars, I focus mostly on Electronic Design Automation (EDA). The vast amount of tooling surrounding modern Semi-Conductors and PCBs are staggering (and expensive). Unifying these tools for the usage of mere mortals has been my task for the past 5 years.

To me the task of the next 10 years is to optimize this flow to take seconds or minutes… Rather than years. Who will be a blackbox and who will be sherlocked?

Reading code is the most important activity of a computer programmer. Ideally the code is then interpreted and ran as a thought experiment inside the programmer’s brain. This sounds hard, but as you learn an environment, the mind will eventually reach this level of tooling.

The ability to reason about code without running it, is the key to failing fast and often. Which you always want to do. Failing slow is painful. Just as Intellisense is a huge help for catching syntax errors early, not having to actually build & run your program, you can iterate much quicker.

Of course what happens if your internal transpiling mechanism and logic simulation units fail as you bite off more than your meat computer can handle?

Just press F5.

I recommend picking your favorite open source project and start reading. If you get stuck, just start dropping some breakpoints and calibrating your internal toolkit.