Persistence pays.
04 November 2024
Welcome to the Suneha app Developer's Blog. One thing I have learned so far is that persistence works. This is perhaps the only thing I have learned in my life so far that has almost always worked. Persistence, just like loyalty, is a highly valuable quality that can't be bought or taught with conventional means. But fortunately it can be cultivated and grown. We can learn to be persistent and slowly by using this quality we can get better at other things in our life.
About a month ago I encountered a problem which had appeared in the development of Suneha which was just beyond my control. The search for it lead me down the rabbit hole of firebase packages and their respective github pages. I tracked it down to one issue which was still open. While I took a vacation one of the first in about a year of solid continous everyday development. I continued to monitor the issue and it was fixed a few days later with the firebase team releasing a quick fix.
I returned from vacation restarted the project and applied the new changes. I was 99% sure that it would work because everyone on github reported that it worked. It did not. As always murphy's law was on full display :). I was disappointed and extremely unhappy. However the lesson I had learned from Atomic Habits and by watching The Founder told me to continue working. I kept trying different and different solutions. The final solution I thought of was to create a new project and move all the code to it. Thats when inspiration hit me and I decided to look at Xcode.
Xcode told me a new story that my Xcode account was not added and I did not have proper certificates. I recently switched to a newer mac. But I would have never thought that this small issue would cause problems. Mostly because I had no indication. This problem appeared only when i looked at the issues in Xcode, by specificly running the app in Xcode. I signed in, downloaded the certificates, ran the app and Voila. It worked.
The dissappointment of the past 6 days of constant failure suddenly gave way to euphoria. I jumped up and like a bowler who got a wicket. Pumped my fist in the air. Only to remember how I felt exactly at the same time yesterday. A true understanding of perspective moment happened. I am therefore giving you, the reader this message.
Persistence pays, mostly. The app now runs. And I am happy that I stayed persistent. I hope I stay persistent in the future. I have since fixed the website and written this blog post. I thought I should document this triumphant moment because the past 6 days problems really brought me to a low. I almost quit this entire project all over a very small problem. And now this high of problem solving will also pass. What remains is the lesson. Persistence pays, mostly.