Midnight Design Solutions: Fill & Download for Free

Yes! But I didn't quite start writing code or go to work in the middle of the night - that's quite because I would end up working beyond midnight anyway but that's another story for another day. I would put in a lot of thought into designing so that the actual code would be only an afterthought. This way, I ended up.writimg some really nice pics of code, code that I have been proud of.There have been many instances where I would have been thinking about a design/solution and it would strike at odd times. I made a note of it on paper or in my phone to have the solution implemented later. Sometimes the solutions were so complex for some weird requirements, that I had to make notes for myself to continue with the thought flow the following day.When we are passionate about something, time is irrelevant and it is so true in the case for programmers.

When I started out, I was very much focussed on the technology itself, of course. I still am, but it’s no longer the only thing I’m focused on. I have a lot more concern for the UX of the solution—along with the functionality—than I had at first.Here’s a big lesson that hit me fairly early on, after I had built a few useful things for the same department: you never know exactly which of your solutions is going to mean the most to your client. You get better at anticipating that, of course, but—again, in the early days—I assumed the thing I had worked the hardest on would be the thing most appreciated. But non-programmers have no appreciation for what’s difficult and what’s not. Also, our skill levels are not uniform, so what’s difficult for one of us might be relatively easy for another.Sorry for the caveats. Here’s more what I started out to say. I had spent some time working for the same suite of departments at a university. It was my first jobs as a technologist. I’d just gotten my degree and it was my first professional job. Programming wasn’t all I did in that gig, but it was part of the value I brought. I had recently worked on two projects, one that was difficult, time-intensive, and under-appreciated. The other was fun, simple, and something I coded up in a few days.The fun one was a web-based interface to an Access database. For security purposes, it was not an interface to the actual database, but an interface to a copy of the database that was shuttled across the network automatically at midnight each night. The interface itself was readonly. The end users—who were academic counselors—needed to do two thing: 1) pull rosters for their their upcoming workshops, and 2) reconcile the sign-in sheets for their recently past workshops to make sure what was in the database was accurate. We didn’t have budget for everyone to have a copy of Access.Prior to my solution—for security and data-integrity concerns—only one person (and it wasn’t me) was allowed direct access to the Access database of record where all this info lived. This had been okay in the early days of these programs, but there were now several programs and lot of people needing access to a particular subset of this data.My solution—which was 1) the web-based interface itself, 2) the mechanism for copying and shuttling the file from one server to another, and 3) the mechanism for allowing my webapp to “talk” to the Access database file—was simple, elegant, wittily branded, and solved a major bottleneck for everyone who worked for any of those programs. Everyone loved it. Everyone used it. I was too green to anticipate any of that.Programming is problem solving. You find ways to increase efficiencies—eliminating work and reducing error—and that makes people very happy, because it saves them time and trouble. It’s a great feeling, when it all lines up. It’s an even better feeling when people appreciate your efforts and say so.So, I think, the thing you learn more about is working with clients: anticipating their needs, understanding their concerns, and designing solutions that will address both. You get into the field because the technology interests you, but you succeed in the field by solving the right problems. And that requires a better understanding of the people contending with the problems.

The 18th century was an era of international trade and aggressive global expansion. But accurate navigation at sea out of sight of land was hampered by the difficulty in calculating longitude. Navigators could determine their latitude by measuring the sun's angle at noon or, in the Northern Hemisphere, by measuring the angle of the North Star from the horizon. Finding their longitude was a far more difficult problem, which took four centuries to be resolved.The great seafaring nations, such as Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and France, offered huge prizes for finding such a solution. The British Board of Longitude promised an astronomical £20,000 cash prize - equivalent to about £3.7m today - to anyone who could solve the “longitude problem”. Great scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley all took part in that search.One idea is to use an astronomical event which will enable the hourly difference between two places to be measured. For example, if an eclipse of the Moon takes place at midnight in London but a sailor out in the Atlantic for whom the eclipse takes place at the same time, sees it two hours before his midnight, then we know that there is a difference of 30 degrees between the two places (one twelfth (2/24) of 360 degrees). However, such astronomical events are too rare to be useful.There was a possibility that the solution could come from the knowledge of the relative positions of the stars. The astronomer Johannes Werner proposed drawing up a map of the stars in accordance with the motion of the Moon, which would predict its trajectory over several years. However, the positions of the stars were not accurately known and there were no instruments to measure the distances between the stars and the Moon, making it difficult to predict exactly where it would be.Galileo Galilei proposed taking advantage of the eclipses of Jupiter’s moons, which occur a thousand times a year in a predictable manner, so they could be used as an astronomical clock. But the precise observation of Jupiter while at sea was unrealistic.The best solution to the problem of longitude was to come from the hands of a clockmaker, the self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison (1693-1776), who invented a highly accurate maritime clock that carried the exact time of the port of origin to anywhere in the world, which thus enables an exact calculation of that ship’s longitude.Before Harrison, several others including Christiaan Huygens had attempted to make such a clock to no avail as models were unable to resist the rolling of the seas and keep precise time while in shipboard conditions. The clock had to also be unaffected by variations in temperature, pressure or humidity. Harrison himself spent more than 40 years perfecting the chronometer. He refined his designs by painstakingly building four different timepieces. Each chronometer, more compact and accurate than the last, took many years to make. Sailors on the high seas simply needed to observe when the solar noon occurred and compare with the time on the clock, calculate the difference in hours and multiply it by 15 degrees (360 degrees/24 hours). In 1736, he took his watch to the task on a voyage to Lisbon, it performed well and was praised by the captain.It wasn’t until 1761 that Harrison submitted the fourth model for the £20,000 longitude prize. This mechanical solution to the problem was not to the liking of scientists of the time, nor to the members of the Board of Longitude, who either ignored Harrison and delayed presenting the prize in the hope that a solution involving astronomy would be found. It wasn’t only that they disliked an outsider winning the prize, Harrison’s clock was extremely elaborate, precise and difficult to mass produce. In the end, they had no choice but to accept reluctantly the evidence of the efficacy of Harrison’s marine chronometers.His timely solution revolutionized marine navigation and massively improved the safety of long-distance sea travel. It might even be argued that the chronometer propelled the ascendancy of the Royal Navy and the British Empire, the formation of the empire by wars and conquests of colonies abroad. Harrison’s final design remains the basis for chronometer design more than 200 years later.