Hmmmm
I was doing some database programming, the application was nearly done, all the screens and reports worked fine. However, when I created the menu system to run the app, well, things got weird.
Sometimes the app would open then immediately, and I thought quite rudely, close. How helpful. Other times, menus would be grayed out or acting bizarrely. Often the Windows system menu would just wander back in, unasked and uninvited, and replace my menu. Sometimes the whole thing would lock up for no apparent reason.
Being as I am a professional programmer, I aproached this in a professional manner, thus Joey and Suzy, my cats here in my home office, only had to dive for cover once. “The human is yelling at the computer, it is time to hide under the bed until he calms down. Then we will emerge looking woeful and he will feel guilty then pet and feed us.”
Seasoned programmers know when weird stuff like this happens, it’s practically never a deeply complex tricky hidden error. Instead, it virtually always is something completely obvious – but exactly what that is can elude one for hours. How zen-like, you know the answer is right in front of you, yet knowing this helps little – until you finally get it.
And sure enough, afer much bashing about and gnashing of teeth, I discovered I’d forgotten the line of code that tells the menus to activate. Well duh. However, programmers know exactly what I’m talking about here. You don’t see the error because it’s completely obvious and right in front of you.
Sometimes this is an apt metaphor for life, too!