Happy Little Trees

The Joy of Starting

There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend. In fact, I think every codebase should have a few happy little trees — those foundational components that everything else grows from. You know me, I think every project needs a friend too.

Let’s build some happy little functions. We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy little bugs that teach us something new. And that’s the beauty of software development — every error message is just a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Finding Your Palette

Just think about these things in your mind — then bring them into your code. In painting, you work with a limited palette of colors to create infinite possibilities. In engineering, you work with a limited set of primitives to build systems of staggering complexity.

The key is knowing when to use a big brush and when to use a tiny little detail brush. Architecture decisions are your big brush strokes. Implementation details are where you add those happy little details that make everything come alive.

Trust the Process

We don’t really know where this goes — and that’s the fun of it. You start with a blank canvas, or a blank file, and before you know it you’ve got a whole world emerging. The mountains weren’t there a moment ago, but now they define the horizon.

That’s exactly what happens when you start building. One component leads to another, one function calls the next, and suddenly you have something that works, something that breathes, something that makes people smile. And isn’t that what it’s all about?