Day 4 — Functions

do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;

— Hamlet (3.2.4–5)

Being able to fathom alternate ways of doing things frustrates instructors and students alike. Case in point:

This works where topping may either be a parameter defined as an argument of takeOrder in line 5:

const takeOrder = (topping) => {
  console.log('Order: pizza topped with ' + topping);
};
takeOrder('mushrooms');

OR it may be a variable that has its data interpolated into the string that the console is printing as follows:

//mushroom as variable
let topping = 'mushrooms'
const takeOrder = () => {
  console.log(`Order: pizza topped with ${topping} `);
};
takeOrder();

Both of these print Order: pizza topped with mushrooms

Both have the same tasty result.

However, for the purposes of learning, one is asked not simply to produce but to produce a certain way.

I cannot tell you how painful it was as a student actor to use my being, my voice, my body before my classmates and our instructors, to move an audience in accordance with a director’s wishes and yet be told that I had done what I did wrong. And they were right. I had not produced the intended result in accordance with what we had been taught. I had, as I have done so often throughout my life, done my own thing. I hadn’t relied on the technique we had been taught and upon which we were being graded.

Mastery of a skill requires knowledge and commitment to a craft. Nothing gets in the way of learning the hum-drum ins-and-outs of a craft as inspiration. The craft is meant to kickstart inspiration. It is meant to be there when inspiration is not. The craft is what you can rely on when the muses do not sing to you.

It’s painful but it’s worth learning on those days when you’re at sea in a sailboat when there’s no divine wind blowing.