May 18, 2002

Coding is weird. Sometimes

Coding is weird. Sometimes it takes brains, but sometimes it is just dreary and repetitive. Like today - I'm writing a system to accept form input and then use the input to dynamically generate a pdf file. I use a pdf template and then overlay the dynamic data into certain spots on the pdf template. So they supplied me the pdf template with blank spots. And then it was basically up to me to put them in the right place. So for three hours I just did this:

  1. Picked some coordinates (in inches) out of the air (I was going to say my butt but the image was just a bit too close to biology).
  2. Generated the pdf
  3. Opened it in my browser's pdf plugin
  4. Eyeballed the results
over and over and over again.

I finally did get it working, though, and it looks great. And I have to admit that it wasn't so bad. Sometimes I procrastinate the heavy problem-solving, so once in a while the repetitive, routine trial-and-error stuff is a nice break. Of course, getting paid for it hourly helps. Posted by Curt at May 18, 2002 12:17 AM