It’s the first T-SQL Tuesday of the new year. As we move forward, this month’s invitation is neat in that it’s looking back to learn how to move forward. I think while many people do look back, they don’t always use that information to move forward. This month’s host, Reitse Eskens, asks us about abandoned projects.

As always, if you’re interested in hosting, blog, and then send me a note about hosting. I still have space in 2024.

Abandoning a Project

I’m sure that many of my employers started something and then abandoned it, and there are no shortage of projects I’ve abandoned myself, but nothing big springs to mind. Mostly I find my employers muddle through very poorly written, poorly performing projects and are very hesitant to abandon them.

However, I will say that I have a couple things on my mind personally. This past December I completed the Advent of Cyber, which I wrote a bit about.  I actually got a certificate (of sorts).

That wasn’t abandoned, and I was glad I went through this, learning about a few tools.

However.

In the past, I’ve worked on the Advent of Code, and I’ve never finished it. I even built a repo, where I separated out puzzles by year. I invariably get a week in and then don’t have the time, and I struggle with coding out the puzzles. They get hard, and since this is a spare time thing, I run out of energy and interest.

I do think, however, I learn some things. A few years I’ve tried to solve puzzles in PowerShell, Python, and SQL, which makes me translate logic, and think about the issues. SQL is hard, as a number of the puzzles are really iterative, and SQL isn’t great at iteration.

I do learn.

Even when I abandon projects, I get better at writing code and solving problems. It requires me to think, and it also teaches me things about how to look at a requirement and then write code. I also love the skill of building in tests to verify my code from the samples, which is a good skill.

It’s an abandoned projects, and even as I write this, I feel like I should work on the 2023 puzzles a bit. I probably won’t because of time, but I do think starting and abandoning this project teaches you something.