Sketches

Source: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/312/6/c/how_to_paint_digitally_over_a_pencil_sketch__gimp__by_crystal_89-d5kbt1t.jpg

Every artist knows that the first step to amazing paintings is sketching the art framework. The counterpart of artists would usually be the scientists (very loosely I defined it here). I'm guilty as charged when it comes to strictly sketching my experiments, since we somewhat know what is the concepts. I'm not saying that all scientists are like me, I know of many colleagues who have meticulous planning methods.

Upon attending programming classes for absolute beginners, I realised one repetitive warning from all lecturers - PLAN the logic of programming even before starting. For the past two days, I worked on the basis that I need to know this and that, without realising how dodgy it has become. This morning, I woke up thinking about it after some hiccups last night trying to figure out the meaning of the error I got trying to run ADMIXTURE. Apparently, I need to apply filters to the dataset. Yes, I have NO idea how to apply filters. Froze me on track.

Then, I began to liken myself as an artist, of a different field. Not the colourful flowers blooming in the middle of spring, but a starter of another type of bloom - the programming one. Running back to the previous checkpoint, I'm giving myself some time this morning to sketch the structure of the whole process before I get into the minute details of each step. Yes, ADMIXTURE is just part of the whole process and I was obsessed with it the whole of yesterday.

Source: http://isaiahbowling.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Example_looping_program-full.jpg

This is an example of planning a looping program. Not sure what language they are using. So any computer scientist who might know, please drop a comment! Thanks!