Inspiration for the weekend #4

Stumbled onto this poem last week…I love it!

It Couldn’t be Done
by Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But, he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, as he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one we know has done it”;
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle right in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That cannot be done, and you’ll do it

July 9, 2010 · Filed under inspiration

2 Comments »

  1. Beckham Said,

    July 13, 2010 @ 12:39 am

    I thought this idea would be helpful in your thought process in terms of shedding light from a different angle on your journey to bringing Kinetic Diagrams to life. So, wanted to share it. Here it is:

    http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

    The concept of “visualizing information” is utilized brilliantly for design purposes in this project.

    Keep up the good posts Jim!

    Enjoy reading it.

  2. Jim Tran Said,

    July 20, 2010 @ 10:51 am

    Beykin, thanks always, for your consistent support of this project, it means a lot.

    Funny timing, you posted this link the very day before I picked up my first Android phone (a Samsung Vibrant phone)!

    App Inventor is intriguing, and I like its goal of making software development more accessible to a larger pool of potential app-developers. In terms of “visualizing information”, App Inventor (and the Open Blocks library which it uses) does a great job of making it easy to see the programming constructs (“when…do…set”) which make up a program, and I can see it being helpful to the novice app developer. It’ll be interesting to see what interesting/complex apps are actually built using App Inventor.

    I think some key metrics of success for a tool like App Inventor are: 1) how many novice software developers use it as a gateway tool to build their initial Android apps, and then move on to more advanced Android programming (without using App Inventor); and 2) how many truly rich and interesting interactive applications are built using App Inventor. Only time will tell if this catches on. That said, I suspect that this tool may find use with casual tinkerers, but at least in its current state, it probably lacks the horsepower to really be part of a serious Android developer’s toolbox: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/sybase/googles-app-inventor-for-android-the-wrong-bet-for-serious-mobile-enterprises/314

    It’s interesting that Yahoo also is experimenting with visual programming as well. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

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