I actually really like the linked article ( https://blog.the-pans.com/wrong/ ), I think it is supportive of ideation and prototyping. It really made me glad to read that.

When learning a new language or environment, there's no place to get an expert to pair program through it (or is there?) Baby steps always look wrong, especially when the baby keeps falling over. It's just part of growing up.

Case in point I recently sent someone a (let's say) figma prototype but I decided to cobble it out of a production language I never used. (So, not actually figma.) It sort of worked but wasn't close to being real. I did it while I was waiting for my laundry to finish. I'm trying to think of how I would apply your standard to the figma wireframe.

If I focus my efforts on doing what you find acceptable, how do you think I should invest my next 200 hours? I have these alternatives:

- I'd like to finish reading the book Pro Git as git is the sine qua non most important tool of the trade and mastery would be very nice. I'm on github and can do basic operations but I think I would benefit from being a master.

- Improve my code demonstration's efficiency. I have a code demonstration up on my github at https://github.com/robss2020/dictionarysequences - I can improve it by approx. 75% with a few lines of code. This will just take a few debugging sessions.

- Redo the above in C. This would be so much fun for me because instead of fake pointers based on Python strings I can use real genuine C pointers to actual memory. And I can implement a hash lookup table that is so much fun. The result would scream with speed it will be 40x to 100x faster than my Python demonstration and I know enough C and C++ to do it perfectly. It's just a straightforward translation of the efficient python code, except C doesn't have a built in hash lookup like Python does so I get to implement one myself. This will let me add a demonstration of one of the most valuable skills, I can potentially use it in high-frequency trading applications (the skill of being able to wrangle efficient data structures in C). It is a massive source of value for me to demonstrate my proficiency in C.

- launch a statistical project. I have a statistics side project I could put work into launching. Right now I have no useable side project online, just my potfolio web site ( https://taonexus.com )

- Finish a technical writing article I started. This would be my portfolio project for technical writing.

My plan was just to do all of the above. First, finish reading pro git but not properly just enough to make sure I can look up what I need to, second improve my code sample but also not properly, just add some breakpoints and putz around to see if I can add the code I'm thinking of, if it works push to my github otherwise just discard it, third, do the translation to C but just cobble together existing libraries for the hash, don't reimplement it myself, fourth launch the statistical project based on cobbled together code, reduce the scope until it's trivial, and as for the technical writing project, use screenshots I've been saving and my final results or impressions just based on the ultimate outcome. Don't make it into a 10,000 word article, don't do further market research etc.

For each of these things, I could put in more time.

How do you think I should budget my time? My ultimate goal is that I am trying to change to a new job as a technical product manager (my resume is on the bottom of my site). Given my goals, how should I budget my time to become a better candidate?

I can't do all my plans your way but I'd be curious to know your feedback about how and where to invest my time.