Having recently been tinkering with coding for the first time in many years, I am reminded how there are different reasons for something not to work. I start out on a project but don’t know how the programming language works or what the computer hardware expects to hear from the program software. Through trial and error, testing hypotheses, and looking online for clues and fragments of instructions or tutorials to piece together, I construct theories and accomplish small tasks that encourage me. Sometimes, I discover, after much work, that I am going about things the right way, but there is a flaw in the software or that the software does not work with the hardware that way its designers hoped or expected it to.
It’s also common to find, upon completing a project, that the result won’t contribute to a larger objective I had. If the point of my work were only to complete the larger objective, it would be fair to say I had been working on the wrong project.
That I keep going–and that I’m not overly concerned–is a good indication that I am playing, that I’m not solely focused on a conventional outcome. When playing, “doing it right” and “doing the right thing” coincide, even though an outcome orientation might suggest they don’t.