Well, that last update took way longer than I was expecting; there were no book updates for half a year. In my defense, life happens, and time flies, ever so faster. When you're young, it might seem you're invincible, nothing really bad can happen to you, and you'll live forever. Guess what, I'm in my fifties now, and this is no longer so for me. Sooner, or later, you'll too start noticing little annoyances, you'll slow down, you'll be vulnerable just like anyone else, ... if you still have parents, be nice to them.
Speaking of life, it seems it'll be happening more, and more in the future, too. Among other things, the skyscraper I live in is scheduled to have a major renovation, with works spanning a good year, or so. Or, maybe not, I'm not sure. You see, people involved in the project already tried to take advantage of naive owners at multiple levels, all the while it's mostly paid by the EU. I'm so tired of all the scummy local sheriffs; I wish EU would put a stop to it, but I'm pissimistic. Anyways, if project still goes forward, I'm not sure how much of work I'll be able to do, I assume I'll be all night-shifting for at least a year.
With the latest update to the book, I'll be so bold, and announce the book to be finished. Yes, you know, I know, it's finished, again. But unlike two-and-half years ago, this time I really don't see anything that needs to be added to the book. Sure, the book desperately needs a few finishing touches, and after that a good spanking polish, and before that I do need to finish grammar, and the last variant most likely needs rewrite. Still, all of this is non-essential in my view, and will be done at more leisurely pace, in parallel to the very next stuff I'll be doing.
What now needs to be done, is to start implementing all that new features I added in recent updates. That means, cleaning up existing code, and while it's not starting from scratch, it's not that far off, either. Just divergence added a major plot in the twist, so to speak, by adding a new layer of complexity when analyzing movement notation, and trying to reconstruct what actually was meant to happen.
On the other hand, starting almost from scratch does have liberating effect on some of code designs that are sub-par. For instance, when parsing notation, I also tried to validate some, if not most, of rules applicable to notation at hand. Prior to that, I was also going back-and-forth on validating things as soon as possible, and wasn't happy either way. Now it's clear to me, validating too early just complicated parser, while also made my job a lot harder.
So, in the future, parser has to be completely separated from validating code. But more importantly, this little lesson also makes me rethink some of design choices I follow because they're good engineering practice. Good practice is a form of a generic design pattern, not necessary applicable to all situations, so maybe I should give up on them, just like I did on trying to catch errors in input as early as possible. Sometimes, one has to relax, have another coffee, and accept that all errors will be caught when their (validation) time comes.
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