Busy busy busy

I've worked on both incubation projects (early R&D, etc.) and on products that are far more stable in their development cycle (Windows). The development cycle for incubation is heavily front-loaded, and I find that when you get stuck, you often get stuck on seemingly simple but endlessly frustrating problems. This is really annoying stuff, especially when these little problems are the only ones holding up completion of the project (which is usually the case).

In comparison, working on a project outside of its initial incubation involves a different set of challenges: there's ongoing maintenance and a little bit of support, but the core development issues are complex and scenario-specific. And inside Windows, I'm insulated against a lot of the tasks not directly related to the actual engineering: things like release management, which is what handles the process of managing the timelines for actually getting the finished product out the door. I find incubation projects often require engineering attention to things like this since the teams aren't large enough to dedicate someone to the task.

So anyway, I'm embroiled in the second class of development right now, and it's great stuff because I can spend endless hours focusing on nuanced technical problems without getting hung up on frustrating incidental issues, or suffering from endless pressure to get things done in half the time. It also means I'm spending loads of hours at the office, but I'm getting a huge kick out of it, too.