TITLE: Recognize
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: October 30, 2022  9:32 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 From
<a href="https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/plunge/">
   Robin Sloan Sloan's newsletter</a>:

<blockquote><em>
 There was a book I wanted very badly to write; a book I had been
 making notes toward for nearly ten years.  (In my database, the
 earliest one is dated December 13, 2013.)  I had not, however,
 set down a single word of prose.  Of course I hadn't!  Many of
 you will recognize this feeling: your "best" ideas are the ones
 you are most reluctant to realize, because the instant you begin,
 they will drop out of the smooth hyperspace of abstraction,
 apparate right into the asteroid field of real work.
</em></blockquote>

 I can't really say that there is a book I want very badly to
 write.  In the early 2000s I worked with several colleagues on
 elementary patterns, and we brainstormed writing an intro CS
 textbook built atop a pattern language.  Posts from the early
 days of this blog discuss some of this work from ChiliPLoP, I
 think.  I'm not sure that such a textbook could ever have worked
 in practice, but I think writing it would have been a worthwhile
 experience anyway, for personal growth.  But writing such a book
 takes a level of commitment that I wasn't able to make.

 That experience is one of the reasons I have so much respect for
 people who do write books.

 While I do not have a book for which I've been making notes in
 recent years, I do recognize the feeling Sloan describes.  It
 applies to blog posts and other small-scale writing.  It also
 applies to new courses one might create, or old courses one might
 reorganize and teach in a very different way.

 I've been fortunate to be able to create and re-create many courses
 over my career.  I also have some ideas that sit in the back of my
 mind because I'm a little concerned about the commitment they will
 require, the time and the energy, the political wrangling.  I'm also
 aware that the minute I begin to work on them, they will no longer
 be perfect abstractions in my mind; they will collide with reality
 and require compromises and real work.

 (TIL I learned the word "apparate".  I'm not sure how I feel about
 it yet.)
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