Ben Carpenter

Sleep, as it turns out, is a great problem-solving tool. Sleep is when you take all of the jumbled thoughts of the day and put them into a logical order so you can more easily work with them. I find this organization to be very helpful when I've come up against a particularly complex problem. With a complex problem, that is a problem with many competing demands or different angles to look at, it's easy to start down one solution trail, hit an obstacle, come back, try a different trail, hit another obstacle, then try the old trail again, thinking maybe you can find a way around the old obstacle, find a potential way around the obstacle, question whether that way is safe or not, return to the other trail or try a different one, find more obstacles, more potential solutions, and more dangers, then lose track of which dangers, obstacles, and solutions went with which trails. Sleeping, I've found, cleans this whole mess up. It gets known obstacles, solutions, and pitfalls match...

This past Thursday night, for training night, I got back to work on one of my personal projects, the Doctors of the Church website (doctorsofthechurch.azurewebsites.net). I didn't get a lot done due to time constraints, but it sure was a lot of fun to do some more free-form development again. I say if you're struggling with motivation or inspiration to learn something, take up a personal project. It's a lot more like playing than other types of training or your regular work. If you're looking for inspiration for a personal project, I suggest just trying to scratch your own itches. This particular project that I'm working on came about because librivox.org had no way of streaming an entire book straight through and also that I didn't want to keep having to look up the Saints. So I created a site where I could stream them one-after-another, and where they are all in one place.

In a previous post (you know the one; it's the only previous post I've got), I stated the primary purposes of this blog as developing my voice and building my brand. I stated that providing some benefit to you as only a secondary goal. Actually, not even a goal. More of a nice by-product if it happpens. Over the past week, I've concluded that I've gotten that hideously backwards. In the weeks leading up to starting this blog, I'd found myself consumed by a desire to dive deep into advancing my career as a software developer. I wanted to take courses, read books, start a blog, hone all of the skills and become great at what I do. I've since found that desire to be a self-destructive one. Earlier this week, during my morning prayer time, I was listening to The Ascent of Mount Carmel, St. John of the Cross' how-to guide of reaching spiritual union with God. In so doing, I was reminded of my priorities in life. I need to love God. I need to love my neighbor. A...

Welcome! My name is Ben Carpenter. I am a software engineer and have been for the past 7 years. I was encouraged by a podcaster, Jonathan Cutrell (Developer Tea), to start a blog and post once a week. The intent is to start building a brand, find my voice, and potentially even help people by sharing ideas that they find useful. Recently, I was inspired to become much better as a developer. I would like to be highly skilled at turning creative ideas into working products that will do a lot of good for people. Two things I've started doing as first steps toward that goal: 1. Listening to a developer podcast  (the aforementioned "Developer Tea") on my way home from work. Thus far, it has helped me by giving some direction on how to start leveling up my coding ability. It has also helped me to get excited about leveling up my coding ability and the things that improved ability can help me to do. 2. Take time each morning to do some sort of training. So far, this has amo...