Expectations

  It is surprising the expectations some people have. They expect everything to be great and worthy of their time. If you stop to think about it for a moment though if everything was great nothing would be. The new normal would be great and everything would be regarded as standard and not great. If everything in the world was perfect we wouldn't know it.

  Take  your health nowadays. If you get a small sniffle or cold you take something to help relieve it and get over it. If you get some other more urgent injury or disease you treat it and most of the time get better from it. This wasn't always the case though. Go back 200, heck even 100, years and you are in a situation where what would be considered great then is now considered absolutely normal. Today though it takes some form or miraculous fix or uncommon surgery to even get noticed, so much of our health is taken for granted.

  The same can be said for any other part of life. My wife and I went to see a couple of films this weekend. Both of them had been reviewed and were not considered that great by critics. However we both enjoyed both films since we didn't have expectations of them. We just wanted to see something that would entertain us and pass the time. We didn't require them to be brilliantly acted, make us feel emotions or be full of deep philosophies. To get anywhere with critics though it seems you need to be exceptional or amazing. With the way things are it is very hard for the films that don't meet this criteria to actually make money and succeed. People are becoming trained to only want the best of everything and not enjoy even the "lesser" things in life. If you enjoy it then it doesn't matter how well it was done as long as any flaws it have don't break your enjoyment of it.

  Anyway, quick thought/rant over with, back to writing exceptional code.