Eureka Moments

Huiqi and I talk about eureka moments as they are observed in programming, at least in my observations of myself.

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated by an algorithm.

00:00 : uh one thing i am really happy about is
00:05 : i found a solution
00:08 : for reusing the scroll panel logic
00:13 : across
00:14 : all three of these components so this
00:17 : code panel on the left here
00:20 : this timeline panel
00:22 : i can scroll up and down left and right
00:25 : and and also also the variable panel as
00:28 : well
00:29 : where is there the variable all three of
00:32 : them are using this same scroll view
00:36 : component
00:37 : to to render the scroll bars and handle
00:40 : the scrolling logic
00:42 : and um and
00:45 : last week that was not the case last
00:47 : week i sort of i didn't have the
00:49 : timeline window yet
00:51 : and then and then for the code panel i
00:54 : sort of
00:55 : duplicated the scrolling logic
00:59 : in in the code panel
01:01 : but it came up with a way to just
01:04 : share all that logic very cleanly
01:07 : did you like extract that to like a
01:10 : component or something like a
01:13 : module
01:14 : it turns out that i didn't have to
01:18 : extract it it turns out that the
01:20 : existing scroll view component
01:24 : without any change could already handle
01:27 : it it's just that i didn't think of it
01:31 : um but i won't go into too much detail
01:34 : and we can probably talk about it later
01:37 : when we're talking about
01:39 : the details of the ui framework maybe
01:43 : but
01:43 : what i would say about that is
01:47 : it was a eureka moment that came
01:50 : when i realized it
01:52 : and and i'm very happy about it like
01:56 : i've
01:57 : done some and this has happened to me in
01:59 : the last month
02:01 : twice
02:03 : where
02:05 : where it was like an idea that came to
02:07 : me that made something that i thought
02:10 : was difficult very easy
02:13 : what did you call the moment like what's
02:15 : the the eureka the eureka moment
02:18 : you recall
02:22 : i'm misspelling that eureka moment
02:26 : a moment of sudden triumphant discovery
02:30 : inspiration or insight like have you
02:33 : ever watched the show house it might be
02:36 : a little old for you
02:41 : like house is a doctor and then he's
02:43 : diagnosing these patients
02:46 : with okay
02:47 : very weird symptoms and no other doctor
02:50 : can
02:51 : solve the case
02:54 : usually around the end of the episode
02:57 : he'll have this eureka moment where
03:00 : another person will be talking to him
03:03 : but he completely zones out
03:05 : okay
03:06 : like he's ignoring that person and he's
03:09 : like
03:10 : that's what it is
03:11 : ten thousand oncologists in this country
03:14 : every one of them loses patience but
03:15 : only you would feel guilty enough
03:21 : [Music]
03:23 : of course you can't even argue on my
03:25 : schedule
03:28 : and then he solves the case
03:30 : the
03:31 : solving this like having a clean way of
03:34 : sharing this scrolling logic between
03:36 : three different views
03:39 : was kind of a eureka moment
03:42 : um and i had another eureka moment
03:44 : earlier when i had to
03:47 : solve the flickering problem
03:50 : every time i scrolled the window the
03:52 : whole screen would flicker
03:54 : because what i was doing was erasing the
03:57 : whole screen and then painting it again
03:59 : i thought of several options of how to
04:02 : solve it and i thought each one was
04:04 : going to be difficult
04:06 : i thought it was going to be a difficult
04:08 : problem to solve but i had an eureka
04:10 : moment
04:12 : and i came up with a double buffer based
04:14 : solution which just means
04:17 : uh have everything paint to a buffer for
04:19 : the next
04:21 : frame for the next image
04:23 : and then
04:25 : pin the buffer over the terminal
04:28 : and that solution
04:30 : ended up being
04:32 : not a lot of code at all and also i i
04:36 : swapped it in
04:38 : and it worked very quickly
04:40 : like i didn't have to make a lot of
04:42 : changes to the framework to to swap it
04:46 : in basically so how did you come up with
04:48 : the buffer idea
04:50 : um
04:51 : [Music]
04:52 : well i mean
04:53 : the origination of the idea is not new i
04:56 : just stole it from what
04:59 : the other frameworks do or or what the
05:02 : game engines do
05:03 : because that's what they usually do
05:05 : it's not the idea itself that would
05:09 : or or even that it was original or
05:12 : anything
05:13 : the idea was in the back of my head
05:14 : there are other ideas that were also in
05:16 : the back of my head i guess the thing i
05:19 : really want to say about this is
05:21 : when i was younger i i was more
05:24 : headstrong
05:26 : i would tend to try to power
05:29 : through problems
05:31 : when i say power through i i probably
05:34 : mean work a lot more hours
05:36 : to solve the problem
05:39 : and
05:40 : and i probably
05:42 : will end up solving it just because i
05:44 : put in a lot of hours
05:47 : but
05:48 : but sometimes the solution wasn't quite
05:51 : so elegant
05:54 : and i feel like
05:56 : now that i'm older i'm
05:59 : i'm better at of going with the flow and
06:02 : allowing the eureka moments to happen
06:05 : and but by that i mean
06:08 : i when when there's a difficult problem
06:11 : that i have either attempted to solve it
06:14 : and then failed
06:16 : or
06:17 : other things about it that
06:19 : occurred to me
06:21 : to
06:22 : to make the problem difficult
06:25 : instead of trying really hard to power
06:27 : through the problem
06:29 : now i usually take a step back
06:33 : okay i've thought about it enough today
06:37 : i'm gonna take a break from this problem
06:40 : and then often i would think about it
06:43 : on on my brick or not on that brick
06:47 : perhaps but on later on during the day
06:50 : when i'm more relaxed
06:52 : my the back of my mind is thinking about
06:55 : the problem
06:57 : and then
06:58 : and then maybe
06:59 : over
07:00 : several days or maybe even a month or
07:03 : however long it takes
07:05 : uh eventually the eureka moment happens
07:09 : and i come up with a solution that i'm
07:11 : really happy about so like when you like
07:14 : compare like different potential
07:16 : solutions because you don't know which
07:18 : one will work
07:19 : so do you just like try them out
07:22 : to a certain extent and it's like oh
07:24 : this is not going to work so next next
07:27 : one or do you like just think through
07:29 : them before like trying them out
07:31 : because as you said sometimes it takes a
07:34 : long time to just try them out and make
07:36 : them work
07:38 : yeah or both
07:40 : both
07:41 : yeah when i try something out and i fail
07:44 : then
07:45 : i try to really understand what the
07:49 : problem is exactly
07:52 : and and that's
07:53 : that's you know what i attribute to
07:55 : debugging like trying trying to
07:58 : really debug and figure out the root
08:01 : cause of problems
08:03 : once you do that debugging and learning
08:06 : about the problem
08:07 : then you have a better appreciation for
08:10 : what the problem
08:12 : really is
08:14 : and then that
08:15 : goes into your
08:17 : your pondering yeah your day-to-day
08:19 : pondering of the problem which sometimes
08:22 : happens subconsciously
08:24 : mm-hmm and you you hear about this kind
08:26 : of work
08:27 : for you know different creative
08:30 : work like
08:31 : artists
08:32 : musician composers etc
08:35 : uh yeah yeah like it's like that your
08:38 : subconscious is working on the problem
08:41 : and you're not trying to force it and
08:43 : and uh
08:45 : yeah because your subconscious are like
08:47 : trying to put together very different
08:50 : things which you normally wouldn't put
08:53 : together sometimes the subconscious
08:55 : comes up with a solution you wouldn't
08:58 : normally think of
08:59 : and then it actually
09:01 : turns out to be a good solution
09:04 : to me when i play piano it's like if i
09:06 : keep practicing this hard part it's just
09:10 : gonna get worse but if i sit sit like
09:13 : just don't play and sit for a while like
09:15 : a day like the next day i will actually
09:18 : play better
09:19 : just because how maybe my subconscious
09:22 : like work through these stuff
09:24 : like when i'm not practicing
09:27 : yeah
09:28 : or just looked at it differently
09:30 : yeah because it's like a it's an
09:33 : optimization problem
09:35 : and when you get stuck what's happening
09:37 : is
09:38 : you can look at it as a decision tree
09:41 : where
09:43 : you have a lot of choices to make
09:45 : you have a decision to make like between
09:48 : using this finger or using that finger
09:53 : so a or b but then
09:55 : but then
09:56 : once you make that decision there's
09:58 : another decision to make like do you
10:00 : lift your elbow up or do you put your
10:02 : elbow down
10:04 : that's between c and d and then there's
10:07 : even more decisions
10:09 : each one of these you
10:11 : pick a choice right
10:13 : um
10:14 : yeah
10:15 : and so you're down very deep in a tree
10:18 : of decisions and then for that
10:20 : particular day you made those set of
10:23 : decisions to get you at like a very deep
10:26 : level in a tree
10:28 : yeah
10:29 : when you sleep on it the next day you
10:33 : come back
10:34 : you when you relax
10:37 : you let go of some of these decisions
10:40 : yeah so the next day you you might be
10:43 : free
10:43 : you might
10:44 : end up on a different path within this
10:46 : tree and
10:48 : that might just end up working just
10:50 : because of luck it's not necessary it's
10:53 : not necessarily because you are smarter
10:55 : today but
10:57 : more more because you're lucky
11:00 : that's true yeah
11:02 : and that that's the optimization problem
11:05 : sometimes yeah you can you can based on
11:07 : where you are you can tell how to
11:09 : improve
11:10 : just based on
11:12 : the local place that you are within the
11:14 : tree but other times the the more
11:17 : optimal problem is far away
11:20 : in a completely separate place in the
11:22 : tree and you will never get there if you
11:25 : use a local based strategy level versus
11:28 : local that's my theorizing about it i
11:32 : don't know if i'm right or wrong about
11:34 : that