The "Aha! Moment"
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
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I have one every time I manage to pull off a righteous dump (that's getting more difficult to do as I get older).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I have one every time I manage to pull off a righteous dump (that's getting more difficult to do as I get older).
Classic. :laugh:
Just along for the ride. "the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) -
MDL=>Moshu wrote:
can't remember exactly
MDL=>Moshu wrote:
plus the info stays with you forever
Unfortunately, the information evidently did not stay with you forever in this case. ;-)
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
HappyMan811 wrote:
Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
I had one when I solved the Poincaré conjecture. I let some Russian guy take the credit, though.
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MDL=>Moshu wrote:
can't remember exactly
MDL=>Moshu wrote:
plus the info stays with you forever
Unfortunately, the information evidently did not stay with you forever in this case. ;-)
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MDL=>Moshu wrote:
can't remember exactly
MDL=>Moshu wrote:
plus the info stays with you forever
Unfortunately, the information evidently did not stay with you forever in this case. ;-)
You remember the feeling but not the details. This is also called middle age :-O.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Any support I provide is from afar. Anyway, you know you're getting old when you realise that it's stupid to pass up on a toilet opportunity.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
Nagy Vilmos wrote:
it's stupid to pass up on a toilet opportunity
Wheeler Rule #1: Never miss an opportunity to pee. This became rule #1 after spending two hours in a traffic jam with a full bladder. My kidneys hurt for days afterward.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
I've been struggling for days trying to figure out why my character in my XNA game can walk through walls, when I find a way to draw actual BoundingSphere's. Turns out XNA's BoungingSphere.Intersect(BoundingSphere2) method's version of "Intersects" actually means "Contains"! A single screenshot of my "A HA!" moment: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/135815/KT%20Pics/boundingSpheres.jpg[^]
-= Reelix =-
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
My biggest "Aha" moment came to me when I realized that almost every problem I face has already been solved by some one else. And if the problem hasn't been solved by some one else, I probably need to look at the problem from a different perspective. I gladly now call myself a hack. Maybe someday I will have an original idea, but until then I will be happy learning from others. This philosophy is the secret to my (somewhat limited) success. Ronald Reagan said it best. There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
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Constantly. It's an indicator that you are doing some real coding and not just some boiler plate stuff and plumbing. Just yesterday I was giving the rendering of my XNA user interface an overhaul. When drawing a tree of forms or controls you have to juggle with several coordinate systems and also have to perform clipping on partially hidden controls, no matter what coordinate system you must use at the moment. There were some bugs like hidden controls that were not clipped or objects which were drawn at the wrong places due to some confusion in the coordinate systems. A mess, because everything I tried had side effects on other things, And finally, after a while, I had gathered enough information and everything fell into place at once.
And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.I quite agree, it's an exaggeration to say it happens daily, but it certainly feels that way. What is more unique, is when you are with a group of senior, bright people, pondering a problem and you realize you are the one that is delivering the correct solution to the problem. The hairs don't go up on the back of my neck, but I feel a heat there and a lightheartedness as though I have levitated a few inches higher. It's like I can't believe for that brief moment, I was the smartest one in the room. It's sort of a delicious tickle. But a more interesting moment, is when you are with a group of people discussing a problem, and usually there is an older and wiser head that comes up with the solution that will be followed, but then you realize everyone is looking at you. The realization that you have become that "older and wiser" head is a little daunting. You no longer have a safety net and are expected to supply the solution. There will be no warning when this occurs.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Any support I provide is from afar. Anyway, you know you're getting old when you realise that it's stupid to pass up on a toilet opportunity.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
Hmm, does that have anything to do with your previous comment:
Nagy Vilmos wrote:
Either it won't come at all or too much comes.
? ;P
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
When this happens to me, it's often in the bathroom. I'll be working on a problem at the computer for hours, then when I take a bathroom break the answer suddenly comes to me. I suspect the change in my environment and activities causes a change in my thinking on the problem. I then think about the problem from a fresh perspective, avoiding the cycles of unproductive thought patterns that weren't getting me anywhere. At the same time, the details of the problem are fresh in my mind, allowing me to easily consider them from fresh perspectives.
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
I was writing a routine to plot dots on a graphics screen used to design various dot matrix printer fonts. One of the font formats used partially overlapping passes to produce extra quality. My attempts to muddle through arriving at the correct point to plot for each dot weren't working. After staring at the problem for a few minutes, a fairly complicated expression to solve the problem suddenly popped into my head, and it worked.
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
"Bob! Glad you're here - we have a quick in-house database we need you to put together for next week's partners meeting. Nothing much; just something for tracking information from past projects and contracts to use in future resumes, estimates, and requests for proposals... that kind of thing. "Here's a sketch. "Oh, and reports, too. One that looks like the government proposal response thing would be good to show at the meeting. "Have a great weekend!" My aha! moment was realizing that each project and contract was a separate and distinct entity tied together by a single parameter - type of project. There was no need for a full-blown database solution. I ditched the whole database/cloud thing and opened a Visual Studio web site project. God bless XML, XSL, DHTML, and my quirky habit of backing up everything I ever do for anyone to a drive that doesn't take adminstrator rights to access, recover, and restore. I asked our graphics guru for a minimalist web interface and pieced the whole project together from the Frankenstien lab of past efforts on my backup drive in less than a week. It's been running for a little over 4 years now and marketing (especially marketing), management, and the rest of the staff like it and use it. Reports are now available in word, xml, and HTML. No one is sure if we're actually getting more work because of it, but we're spending a LOT less time tasking staff for inputs to put together bids and proposals on new work. And, we seem to be making more money on the work we do get. </tootingOwnHorn> :-D
-Bob
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
One night and as I stepped into the bath and the water rose a light went on in my head. The next day at Starbucks I was having a latte with my buddy Archimedes and I mentioned it to him. I'm sure y'all know what happened next.
while (e) { Coyote(); }
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
My best Aha! moment was a simultaneous double Aha!. That is, the same Aha! occurred in two minds at the same time. I was a hands-on supervisor of logic designers back in my hardware days. This engineer approached me with a chicken-or-egg type of problem. The issue was how to make digital and analog hardware play nice together in a random situation. I proposed an all-digital solution to supervise the two other pieces. After a moment's reflection, we both looked at each other as we realized that the all-digital supervisor, with a minor tweak, could eliminate the need for both of the analog and digital pieces.:cool: We were jointly awarded a patent for this.
Fletcher Glenn
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I quite agree, it's an exaggeration to say it happens daily, but it certainly feels that way. What is more unique, is when you are with a group of senior, bright people, pondering a problem and you realize you are the one that is delivering the correct solution to the problem. The hairs don't go up on the back of my neck, but I feel a heat there and a lightheartedness as though I have levitated a few inches higher. It's like I can't believe for that brief moment, I was the smartest one in the room. It's sort of a delicious tickle. But a more interesting moment, is when you are with a group of people discussing a problem, and usually there is an older and wiser head that comes up with the solution that will be followed, but then you realize everyone is looking at you. The realization that you have become that "older and wiser" head is a little daunting. You no longer have a safety net and are expected to supply the solution. There will be no warning when this occurs.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Yes, that is a VERY sobering moment! Especially when you realize you don't have "the" answer, and you can't even think of ANY answer. Humility at its best.
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
The biggest AHA! moment I had on this industry was when my mind switched from structured programming to Object Oriented programming. I spent my early days of programming using VB 5 and 6, that lacked many fundamentol OO aspects so my young brain got trained on structured and that is very difficult to get rid of. Even though later I spent lots of time programming in OO languages, I wasn't really doing OO, not creating, but just using it. But then at one point in time it hit me, when designing a new system. AHA!! Now I know the advantages of OO programing and for the first time I built a system with a lot of reusable code. It was a series of AHAs! One after the other, but the first one started the roll and every time I pushed Ctrl+C on my code I looked again and figured how not to do it and use the OO way.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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you have been stuck for hours and hours trying to solve something or fix something , whether be it an assignment, work or a home project. You feel you have checked every single tutorial Google had to offer and none of them helped :wtf: . Just as you are about to give up, a random thought comes to you,to which by some miracle is the unified solution to your problem. You get this rush and suddenly you scream out "Aha!" Have you ever had that moment? Please share your aha! moment.
I started fiddling with Aspose.Words for document generation. They claim this is easy because you can program to a objectmodel. Well, what I needed was a "MergeField" in a table cell. And their clever 'builder' kept telling me, "you can not add this", "Table already ended.".. Fun stuff. Finally after much fiddling i found something that worked:
Cell cellStart = CreateCell(rowMergeValues, false);
builder.InsertField("MERGEFIELD " + MYVALUE, "«MergeField»");
var current = builder.CurrentParagraph;
current.Remove();
cellStart.Paragraphs.Add(current);
builder.MoveToDocumentEnd();Yes, add, remove, add, move pointer... Aha! The sad part about problems like these is, it's just a few lines of code.. How could that have taken so much time? Also, reading the book "Code Complete 2.0". (Code is read more often that written.) It really changed the way I program now.
