I love to study and play with new stuff. I really enjoy this but there’s something that bothers me. My studies rarely result in something useful.
Some weeks ago I was watching one of Giles Bowkett’s screencasts and got caught by a goal he imposed himself some years ago: create a new app every month. Although that seemed a little too much for my available time, the thought itself kept coming back to my mind.
A few days later I was in trouble to sleep and started thinking about something to do with those hours. I knew I’d like to play with Sinatra and explore Selenium usage via Capybara but I decided I wouldn’t do it without concrete outcomes.
I ended up starting the development of a CPF and CNPJ generator which, even though there are dozens out there in the internet and is not very creative, is being useful for me when testing my apps.
Habit changes are tough to achieve and demand constant effort, but I’m totally into it.
Study, play around stuff, but apply it to something you or someone else will use. A real world example will guide your studies and usually takes your first contact with a technology much closer to what truly working with it would feel. And pushing a new app to the wild is always fun.
It’s not new. A lot of people talk about it. Very few people do it.
In case you’re interested, you can view the source code on GitHub.
More apps coming soon.
Cheers!
