Alice Averlong🏳️⚧️one thing I'd really love to have is a better way to do text input, like have a single program I type into that interfaces with everywhere I type English*.
right now it's a bunch of website textboxes, chat apps, text boxes... a unified customizable & hackable frontend for typing would be perfect.
having it as as a browser extension would also get me 90% of the way there since that's my main place I type, but the remaining 10% would be a pain.
and browser extensions are a pain, too
I've done both before, but those environments hate you too much, so I'll stick to programming where it can be fun and enjoyable
maybe I should compose an official list: Foone's Symptoms of A Programming Environment That Hates You
1. Factors completely outside your control break the code periodically. This is anything that's an add-on, usually. The browsers changed something, the sites changed something, the game changed something... It's a project that can never be finished, can never be put away. It will just break on some random day because some people in a different organization with different goals changed it
The more steps there are between you writing code and that code actually running where it needs to be ran, the less enjoyable it can be for my specific style of fast-iteration-loop ADHD-fueled programming, sure, but the worst is delays where you need to wait on other people, people outside your organization.
3. Environments where you can't do it "the simple way". This is usually a security thing, but it can be other problems (licensing, approved software lists, etc).
Basically any scenario where there's a simple and easy way to solve your problem, but that can't be done, and a much more complicated solution must be done.
1. the obvious simple way
2. the much more complicated, but secure way
so you set up a simple local webserver (python has a oneliner from the command line for it! python -m http.server, or python -m SimpleHTTPServer if you're on 2.x), but then it turns out you can't use some specific feature because chrome decided to arbitrarily limit it to HTTPS to help push the web towards encrypted pages, and canvas fingerprinting means you can't download a PNG off the page...
and now you need a more "real" local server, with valid TLS certificates...
and the thing about that friction is that you remember it? you internalize how annoying it is to do development on this thing.
so the next time you might have some motivation to work on it, that gets lessened by the reminder that you gotta make sure your node-based HTTP mini-server is correctly installed (you updated Node for another project, maybe that broke it?) or if the certs expired or your new browser didn't accept them
a big part of what helps keep projects going after a long time is minimal friction to getting back into them, you can just pick them up and start coding.
The more that feels like a slog, the less likely you are to keep up working on it
We all have limited time, limited energy, limited focus, limited patience.
and the more of those limited resources are spent on other things, like upgrading/repairing the environment before you can get to coding on the feature, the less you have to spend on the feature itself
the only other way I can think of to quickly burn out a programmer on a "fun" project:
4. Your changes don't seem to matter.
either you're fixing something and the bug remains, with no evidence you're affecting it, or your new feature can't be tested for whatever reason.
lack of feedback in general
this can both be immensely frustrating (I've rewrote all five modules that integrate with the TextBox module, and the Spellchecker bug STILL HAPPENS INT HE SAME WAY! AHHHHH COMPUTER GOES IN LAKE NOW!)
or just demotivational, because you're not getting the whole "yay, I did a thing!" dopamine hit
but even if you've not got my particular broken brain...
if every time you work on something, there's no reward for that work, you're not going to want to do it. Your brain recognizes this is not a reliable path to reward, so why bother?
a tip for this that'll help, if you're doing something that's not going to result in an obvious change?
make it change something.
set up performance metrics, unit tests, integration tests, whatever.
Now the reward is "I got formatText() down to 7ms on The Bee Movie Script!" or "I finally fixed that bug where octupley-nested brackets would segfault the parser"
which can feel exactly like friction before you can code.
but if you can get that set up so you have a visible goal, it can really help
like if you've got a lot of manual steps you have to do as part of the build/test process, see if you can find time/energy/motivation to spend some time just streamlining that.
Even if it doesn't give you a new feature or bugfix now, it'll help with future ones
and doing it in a separate session from feature/bugfix work means it doesn't feel like friction.
this is basically a "clean up your room, put away all your tools" kind of maintenance. It doesn't advance your project itself, but it lessens the friction for your next development session
so yeah. quick summary on the common features of Development Environments That Hate You:
1. Third parties break your code (regularly)
2. You can't deploy it without third party approval that could take days
3. You can't do anything "the easy way", even as a test
4. Your code changes don't seem to matter
There's a lot you can't avoid in this area, but that doesn't mean the impact it can't be lessened.
sometimes it can be streamlined, or you can simplify how much new code needs to be verified
and the final tip for these problems, the one I mostly use?
Don't work on platforms that hate you and don't respect your time.
If you can avoid it, DO. Develop somewhere that doesn't feel like you're fighting the system just to get your code working.
btw a general guideline for longterm projects:
try to structure them so that working on them is a lot of relatively short sessions, with positive feedback at the end of each
Instead of thinking about it as "I just need to sit down and code on it for 5 hours a day, and after 40 days it'll be done!", maybe structure it like "I'll work on it for 5 hours, and then I post a screenshot of my progress on social-whatever"
so then after each session you get likes and comments and such on what you've done this time.
This makes working on it feel more obviously good, because you know there'll be some dopamine at the end of that session, not just at the end of the project
Koree A. Smith 
Cosmo
Hugo Mills
Vincent Sparks 🔜 Furlingame@foone I've heard chores like this referred to as "shaving one's yak", or "yak shaving", a term that broadly means something that does not obviously accomplish any goal but will make accomplishing other goals easier in the future.
It's a concept I'm excited about. I spent today building a Rust version of nvr (program that, when called with a file argument from a terminal emulator inside of Neovim, will open that file in the parent copy of Neovim), complete with the ability to stream from stdin to a new Neovim buffer and allow the user to begin to edit the file while the program generating it is still running, which I'm immensely proud of even though I didn't make any progress on my actual projects today. When I can convince myself to do it, it pays dividends.
I just really wish Nix didn't generate quite so many endless headaches, so I didn't keep putting off fixing my home-manager configuration for months at a time.
Wolf480pl@foone
not sure if that works for you, but for me there's a certain type of coding where I'm happy if it doesn't change anything: refacroring.
In fact, I'm only happy if I can convince myself that it didn't change how the program works, and surprisingly, the trick here is the same: have tests.