Sometimes a lot of work does not manifest much

One of the most painful aspects of the work I do is that I need to learn to work with new software libraries on a regular basis. The pain is associated with learning new syntax, parameters, and usages. One generally knows what the libraries are supposed to do, but cannot get them to work until all of the nuances, idiosyncrasies and minutiae are well understood. For extensive libraries, that just takes a lot of time–at least for me. There are some libraries I have used for so long (OpenCV, Boost, Qt, etc.) that I can rapidly do the vast bulk of what needs to be done in a new application because I am intimate with the minutiae. But there is always something that changes and requires the use of new libraries–obsolescence, license changes, functionality changes and that sort of thing that require the adoption of new libraries. I actually kind of enjoy learning new stuff, but it is a lot more fun when there is no schedule or budget to create stress.

What was that all about? I have found some libraries I want to use to plot my EKG. They look great and I wish I would have started working with them sooner. I am confident now (well, not 100%, but very confident) they will be an excellent fit for this and future projects so I am starting to use them. Last night I spend three hours to get from the top images to the bottom image, then discovered I was probably using the wrong chart type for the thing I wanted to do, so I spent another hour to start getting the new graph type in place, but never got it quite working. This kind of thing is normal for me. Maybe I am just slow, but perseverance counts both in software development and in learning. Maybe I will be able to get the chart going tonight.