Gotta Admit, Heads-Down Coding is A Ton of Fun
Today I've been doing a fair share of heads-down coding on the Google Visualization DataTable in Java - to get it up to the current JavaScript API published by Google. I started with this update a few days ago, but I stopped at the filtering and sorting. Today I dug into the filtering and allowed either a Java List<Map>, or the standard JSON array of maps. To make this a little easier, I made a parser to take the JSON string and convert it into the Java List<Map> and then have the JSON version of the method call the Java version. Pretty simple, but the converter was a little tricky, but not too bad.
I was pleased with the filtering. It worked wonderfully, and while it's probably not the highest performance implementation, it's pretty good, and certainly good enough for what I'm going to be using it for initially, which is just filling out the API spec. But if there becomes a problem later, I can imagine a few ways to make it nicer, I just didn't mess with them, and so performance tests to see which is better.
But the really nice thing was just that I was able to shut the floor out, listen to some decent music instead, and focus on coding. The one thing I really enjoy. That was the treat I gave myself today - the pleasure of creating. I really don't get to do it enough.