Sometimes when I’m programming I look back at old code that I wrote long ago and I am surprised. I say to myself “I wonder what was going on in that guy’s mind.”
There are times when I think “Would, he really didn’t have a clue, did he? I’m just going to have to fix this now.”
Then there are other times when I look at code that I wrote some time ago and I think “This guy is so much smarter than I am. I have no idea how he figured out how to do that.”
I’m not sure what it all means. Is what I am describing some failure of long term memory? Or is it just the fact that we use multiple parts of our mind when we do something like programming a computer?
I know that technically I’m talking about a single-person activity. But sometimes it sure feels a hell of a lot like collaborating with somebody I don’t quite know.
More than once I’ve looked at odd code in an ancient project to see that i left a comment addressed specifically to me in the future, saying something like “you’re going to look at this and want to rewrite it so that <>. You already tried that and here’s why it didn’t work:”
Ah, brilliant!