Why Did I Die?

I have been thinking about producing a page with a list of bad ideas and decisions with the intended outcomes and problems they were supposed to address and an explanation on why they failed. This is done with the intent that maybe there is a way to leveraging the knowledge of why some ideas result in failures into saved time and better making. The title is a multilayered funny. On the surface it is joking on how something dangerous was overlooked and caused someone's death and no one anticipated the danger. The "why did I die" is a mnemonic device for the letter Y in Morse code. For this page, it is for why did this not work, why did I think this would work, why did I waste the time, and why this part or idea wasn't used. Man, it is almost like Cypher Bill was here.

Pretty much 90% of the crap I tried to program was garbage.

The reasons for this is:

• Programs were done for a specific function.
• There was little knowledge of how complex the programming should be.
• Little was known about how much information is needed in the programming.

Why did I let this happen:

• The overall importance of the program was underappreciated.
• The resources online don't help because I lacked the magical starting knowledge.
• The focus wasn't perfection of this step, but was getting it good enough to get to the next step.
• Because in first grade, I was too busy looking around in Mrs. Reed's class to focus on my school work.

What can I do better in the future:

• Read, Read, Read, practice several times, and then create a real program. -doesn't help with wasted time...
• Try to find a bite sized starting point for the programming.
• Understand the scope and breath of the program's purpose.
• Write an outline of the functions of the program.
• Organize everything.
• Take good notes.
• Make comments.
• Write with the ability to add features and functions or change their complexity.

Why do I think this will help:

• Programming is an organized path planning for a machine.
• The more you understand and the better organized it is should make programming easier.
• This has been seen at places like Github to make understanding easier, where notes and comments are the law.

Designing problems.

3D printed parts issues:

• Over focused on the individual parts instead of how they would work with other pieces.
• Not using parametric functions on the parts.

Why did I do this:

• Assumed it would be done correctly the first time.
• Didn't start the model with parametric functions in mind.
• It was done as a "quick" fix for an "easy" problem.

How can I do better in the future:

• Measure more
• Make parametric parts
• Make a prototype and then move to the final part when all of the parts associated are available for sizing and testing.
• Print with speed in mind and design with quality in mind.
• Update models to reflect reality.

Why do I think this will help:

• 3D printing can get frustrating when you deal with multiple materials and are trying to make pretty parts.
• Parametric parts will make design modifications easier.
• Better designing should reduce wasted time and materials.
• Faster prints will result in checking if designs need to be improved.
• Quality designs should be easier to improve.
• The more you fudge things the wider the margin of error will become.

I believe that these issues boil down to needing to make the ideas:

recyclable,

with precision and accuracy-- set to high and true (every time),

purpose driven,

own-able,

modular,

and that contain good functions to reduce redundancy, bloat, complexity, and length.

Frank can't poop

The last one is to check if you are paying attention.

I hope to post some more when I screw up some more, but my goal is to screw up less.

Learning difficulties.

VM Issues:

• Slow.
• Small screen.
• Desktops get confusing.

Why I used VM:

• To save time.
• Not lose data on another machine.
• To make learning easier by avoiding version differences than the guide that it was made for.
• Comfort.

What can be done to make things better in the future:

• Run ROS on an external USB HDD.

Why would this help?

• It would offer all of the assumed benefits of a VM.
• It would offer none of the issues encountered with a VM.

*Note: I am not against VM's, I feel that they inhibit the learning experience by making the process less immersive.

*Note: I use the VM's now that I am more familiar with Linux and ROS.