modal verbs - Weird future tense usage


I am now reading The Clean Coder book and have noticed a couple of cases of weird (for non-native speaker) future tense usages.



  • The point of the kata is to train your fingers and your brain. I'll do a kata or two every day, often as part of settling to work. I might do it in Java, or in Ruby, or in Clojure, or in some other language for which I want to maintain my skills.`


The phrase about doing a kata or two every day looks perfect for Present Simple. Why does the authoer use Future Simple instead?



  • However, a professional also knows that there will be times when he will fail, his risk calculations will be wrong, his abilities will fall short; he'll look in the mirror and see an arrogant fool smiling back at him.


Shouldn't we use Present Simple after when/if in this kind of cases? I am especially curious about this case as sometimes I forget to switch to Present Simple after if/when and I thought it is a critical error (which I didn't expect to see in a book).



Answer



In both cases will is correctly used. In the first example, will is used to indicate that the doing of a kata is typical behaviour. Swan in Practical English Usage (p629) states:



We can use will to talk about typical behaviour. Example: She'll sit talking to herself for hours.



In the second example, the knowing is in the present and the failing is in the future, so there is no problem in using will:



I know now that at some point in the future I will fail.



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