It still amazes me even after all the years I have been doing it how I can get paid to sit and do the thing I was told off for doing at school, day dreaming. That is basically what I do when I am asked to think about a project. I sit down with a hot mug of coffee and stare into the middle distance, planning, constructing the code and what it is meant to do. Breaking it up into its constituent parts, what is needed for this, what is needed for that. Then I tell the client what my ideas are.

I have a rare gift, I was told this by a college lecturer, he was always amazed that I could sit and think for a while and as if by magic the code would flow from my finger tips and would work. No planning required I’d write the code. There is a plan in reality, but its in my head. Its hard to describe I see the code, how its meant to be written, it runs in my head, its like a mystical thing.

Of course I do plan on paper, I do put it all down, otherwise no one else would see it, but I do have that ability when something breaks and a quick solution is required to work blindly to fix it so that a product in the field being used here and now can be useful again while we do a proper fix.

I’m also a very quick learner, a lot of the micro controller projects I work on require learning new tricks new techniques, or even new programming algorithms, as most manufacturers like to stamp their own identity onto their processors, new CRC algorithms etc. All things you have to learn to get on with the project.

That is the reason I do what I do, I like the challenge of learning something new, the tech moves on so quickly you have no time at all to be bored. It all starts to blur into one eventually though as all new programming methods have some sort of link to an old method just with a slightly different ISP entry scheme or something.

So if your a day dreamer and keep being told to pay more attention, remember some jobs in life require you to stare into the middle distance and have a good day dream, and its what you will be paid for.

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