If you looked only at my projects, you might guess I am a finance person, a data person, or a security person, depending on which one you opened first. I am none of those. What I am is curious, and curiosity does not care about job titles.
Three domains, one habit
Look at what I have built so far:
- ChainDeck turns an option chain into signals about the market.
- Unbake takes a spreadsheet of plain numbers and recovers the formulas behind it.
- GraphSentinel walks a graph of identities, devices and incidents to investigate a security alert.
Options, spreadsheets and security have almost nothing in common as industries. They share a habit of mine: I get curious about a thing I do not understand, and I build something to find out. Building is how I learn. I do not feel I understand a subject until I have made something that works in it.
Crafty by nature
I am artistic and crafty, and I do not keep that separate from the engineering. Making a small object with my hands and making a small program have more in common than people expect. Both reward patience, both reveal their flaws only once you use them, and both are more satisfying when the finished thing looks like someone cared.
That is why I fuss over details that a user might never consciously notice: the spacing in a table, the wording of an error, whether a chart reads at a glance. I cannot help it. A rough edge that nobody else would see still bothers me.
Why I keep trying new things
My rule is simple: if something interests me and I have never done it, I try it. I will usually be bad at it at first, and I have come to value that. Being a beginner is a quick way to learn how much you did not know, and it keeps me honest about the things I think I am good at.
Trying new things also has a practical payoff. Almost every technique in my projects came from somewhere outside the project. An idea from statistics shows up in a trading dashboard. An idea from databases shows up in an agent. The more places I have wandered, the more tools I have to borrow.
The risk
Curiosity has a cost, and I know mine. I start more things than I finish, and I can spend too long on the interesting part of a problem and not enough on the dull part that makes it usable. The antidote I have found is to ship small, write about it, and let the writing force a clean ending.
What is next
I do not know, and I take that as a good sign. There are a few things I am turning over, and one of them will probably become the next project. When it does, it will be in the flight log.