Understanding Disorder

Right now I am half way done with my summer job. I had worked in this program twice before, but unlike past years, this time my hob has involved much more logistics and organization rather than teaching “per se”. It all started by setting up a smart way of retrieving and formatting all of the documents produced, which I described in the article “Smart Latex Typesetting”. It was the first time for me to engage in such a big project.   As such I have learned tons of things, specially by looking at my mistakes. If I had to say only one thing of what I’ve learned: Organize EVERYTHING perfectly from the beginning – think of the unthinkable and prepare for it.

Although it might sound somewhat trivial, it is amazing how much what may appear as small details can potentially become huge pains to deal with if not tackled in a timely fashion. This is specially true when whatever you are doing will eventually be distributed to a public. In this case any bug left behind will reproduce exponentially and hunt you down. My project is puny compared to anything done by a software company, say, Firefox. Still just after finishing it, I can now barely imagine the level of organization and care required in order to maintain such complex systems. In the bottom line this is just a reflection of the mathematical fact that starting from a small environment (or a project, or anything) and keeping organized as it grows is a lot easier than trying to organize a big environment that is disorganized. I guess that I should start applying that same principle to my room .

Right now I am half way done with my summer job. I had worked in this program twice before, but unlike past years, this time my hob has involved much more logistics and organization rather than teaching per se. It all started by setting up a smart way of retrieving and formatting all of the documents produced, which I described in the article “Smart Latex Typesetting”. It was the first time for me to engage in such a big project.   As such I have learned tons of things, specially by looking at my mistakes. If I had to say only one thing of what I’ve learned: Organize EVERYTHING perfectly from the beginning – think of the unthinkable and prepare for it.

Although it might sound somewhat trivial, it is amazing how much what may appear as small details can potentially become huge pains to deal with if not tackled in a timely fashion. This is specially true when whatever you are doing will eventually be distributed to a public. In this case any bug left behind will reproduce exponentially and hunt you down. My project is puny compared to anything done by a software company, say, Firefox. Still just after finishing it, I can now barely imagine the level of organization and care required in order to maintain such complex systems. In the bottom line this is just a reflection of the mathematical fact that starting from a small environment (or a project, or anything) and keeping organized as it grows is a lot easier than trying to organize a big environment that is disorganized. I guess that I should start applying that same principle to my room .

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Life, Technology, distribution, Firefox, Latex template, organization, projects, spread of programming bugs, summer job. latex