Development Balance

There is a balance to strike. Too few active development projects and I'm not pushing on any boundaries of learning; just what I need for the work layed out before me. Too many projects and each suffers from fleeting focus. Do a little on this project, do a little on that project; none of them are progressing enough to develop that feedback loop. You know the one - where you code some stuff, it works, it feels good, so you code some more - it also works, it also feels good, etc. Just the right number of projects...that is the place to be. Maybe you have one project that really pushes your limits - forcing you into new territory. You have a few others that are in the pure production stage...many of the decisions and thinking are done...you just have to crank the rest of the code. Maybe one or two projects almost finished.

I've been developing software for many years. This balance is elusive. I used to think it was out of my hands; the result of external forces. The longer I develop the more I realize it comes from decisions accumulating as I work. Which projects I push for, which ones I shy away from, which design approach was used , how much unit testing was done, how many simplifying assumtptions were made which ignored broad swaths of possibilities? Like an incrementing counter in a recursive loop...eventually it can overflow.