It’s not as complicated as it seems

When a large project or task is in front of you, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Your mind starts to race a little thinking about how it’s all going to work together. So many moving parts, so many interactions. Because software is so flexible and intangible, and unlike other kinds of building or engineering pursuits, you don’t absolutely need to know what the plan is, or how much material you need ahead of time. That’s both the beauty and danger. The temptation is to just dig right in. But that’s a mistake, of course.

You just need to break it down

Books introducing the concept of object-oriented programming often use the car analogy to explain its virtues, and it’s a good one. A car is much easier to understand when you break it down into all its parts and think about what each part does.

To build a car application, you only need to consider the real parts of a car, and what they do. The parts of the car become the application’s things — objects. What the things do become the methods. The description of the things become the attributes.

Your work is easier than you think, in other words, but it’s also easy to forget how to make it easier, or to make it easier at all. Get yourself a dumb movie line, like Creed’s, “One Step, One Punch, One Round at a Time” and remember to recite it before you start working. It will remind you that this is the best way to get the job done. And the way to create the individual steps is to…what? Yes! Break it down.