#+TITLE: Realizing You Need To Start Over
#+DATE: <2023-07-28 Fri>
#+DESCRIPTION: Sometimes, it's better to start fresh, than to continue forward.
Recently, I've been trying to work up the effort to work on one of my side
projects. This side project, SilverMUD, is something I've been wanting to make
for ages, and think about often. Yet when I try to work on it, I find myself
unmotivated and unproductive. Why would I not /want/ to work on the thing I /want/
to work on? 

* Figuring Out /Why/ I Don't Want To Work On It.
I decided to sit down and really think about why I couldn't find the motivation
to work on it. I sat staring at the codebase, and wondering why all of the ideas
that were bouncing in my head just didn't seem to want to become lines of C and
Scheme. I eventually began thinking about what my original goals were when I
started it. To put it simply, they were:


- Learn a load of new concepts like network programming, multi-threaded
  programming, and more.
- Use them to build a programmable multi-player role-playing game.

  
Very vague, I know. I've simplified them here, but that is the essence of
it. So how did it go? It went well, really well... for the first goal. The
second, however, went somewhat poorly. I had a general idea of what I wanted to
build, a setting-agnostic role-playing system that is enjoyable over a
text-based interface, inspired by text-adventures and multi-user-dungeons of the
early days of computer entertainment. I never took steps towards building it
until much later in the project's design. Therein lies the crux of the issue.

I spent my entire time focusing on the one design goal, which was to learn. I
was excited by the new concepts, and I got right down into it. A perfectly fine
approach for a learning project. However, I structured the program in a way that
wasn't really easy to add a game on top of. To get straight down to the point; I
took a wrong turn with the design. While the goal of learning the concepts was
going excellently, I wasn't considering game design or programming at any point
during it, with the assumption that I can do it later.

The weird part is that assumption is true. I could continue with the current
state of the codebase. However, it's going to require essentially restructring
the program entirely to do it well. At that point, I may as well consider what
I've learned since starting, and start again!

That's what I think is best to do in this scenario. Start again. The reason I
felt like I wasn't able to work on it was because I was trying to avoid
"throwing away my progress". But that progress was built on a mistake, a misstep
in terms of design. I had thought about how I would like to build the gameplay
systems, but I had made no attempt to implement those plans during the design,
and considering that is the whole point of the program that was a /big/ mistake.

Then, after considering it further, I realized I'm not throwing it away. I'm
merely doing the same task I'd have to do if I soldiered on, but this time I can
start from a clean slate and make better decisions.

* What I Have Learned.
Sometimes, you have to take a step backwards to try a different route. It feels
annoying, and can feel like you're not making progress, but that isn't the
case. The really annoying part is that I normally iterate in this way, and leave
my programs open to that iteration. But this time I just happened to build
things in such a way that that iteration became difficult and awkward, not
taking full advantage of the concepts I was learning. I had a gut feeling about
that when I was writing it, but I found myself having too much fun playing
around with whizzing bits and bytes up and down wires to stop and do the work
when it would have been best. 

So to sum it up, if you have the gut feeling that something needs to be changed
as you're writing it, and you have all the time in the world, do it. Otherwise,
do it soon as. Otherwise you'll have something built and have to tear it all
down and start again.

Starting again isn't the same as starting for the first time. You can take what
you have learned, and build better, build faster. But this time, I have to start
again. Which is really annoying, because usually I make great effort in making
the exact opposite happen. Oh, well, can't win 'em all.

And I've basically gotten a chat program out of it, too. A little rebranding,
and bish bash bosh, poor man's encrypted IRC.