I don’t remember thinking about state very much when I first started programming. It was all a confusing mishmash of heap, stack, classes, inheritance, and other things I’ve probably forgotten.

Slowly over time, a creeping sense of dread began to creep into my mind. There was some outside force affecting my code, an insidious actor corrupting my perfect designs, there was something else here in the room with me. That unnamed thing turned out to be my friend/enemy ‘state’.

These days I think about state all the time. How much of it? How do I update it? Can I recreate it? Do I need to version it? How do I display it? Is it consistent? Where to store it? How do we share it? Can I hide it? And on and on.

It’s the first thing I think about when I’m starting to design something, the last thing I agonize over before go live and usually the first thing to go wrong. ☺

I’m interested in making some metal sculpture, so I picked up a metal bender. I took me most of Sunday to make a removable wooden base for it and figure out how to do some basic bends.

Some of the things I was able to put to together.

I have finished the mini-ottoman/footstool that I have been working on the last few weeks. The frame is steel 1” square tube and 3/4” angle that I spent way too much time grinding.

I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I wish I had taken more pictures of the welding process, but such is life.

My “enterprise edition” pen holder I made to practice MIG welding.