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Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

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Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#41

Post by nostrademons »

swalsh wrote: post #29
nostrademons wrote: post #3

Never heard of the two people you mention, but I'll share what I've observed: The two biggest time sinks in everyday programming are 1.) communicating with everyone else and 2.) looking things up. If you can avoid these and have a quick analytical mind, you can basically program as quickly as you can type. So the secret to being insanely productive is to work as a solo programmer in a domain where you are thoroughly…

"looking things up" To expand on this point, it's not the time it takes to look things up. It's the loops of trying and failing. I've recently switched from C# to Ruby. In C# I'd consider myself as close to an expert as an ordinary man can get. I never had to look anything up, but more importantly... it was rare that I was confused why something didn't work. In fact most of the time when I saw something not work I kn…

It's both - think of having to look something up on the Internet as an L1 cache miss, while having to look something up and then try multiple variations as an L2 cache miss (having the API in muscle memory so you don't have to think about it is a register hit). It may take you 3 seconds to write out an API call from memory, 3 minutes to search for it on the Internet, and 3 hours to diagnose a problem through trial and error. Occasionally even as much as 3 weeks - I've had bugs that lasted that long when it was a bug in the underlying framework, because you never expect that the bug will be in someone else's code.

Obviously avoiding the 3-week bugs will save you more time than the 3-minute lookups, but you can continue to improve significantly by turning many of those 3-minute lookups into 3-second typing bursts.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#42

Post by blakeyrat »

iron_ball wrote: post #38
walterbell wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read an interview with Guido van Rossum, Jeff Dean, and Craig Silverstein within Google where they were asked basically the same question, and the answer all of them gave was "The ability to hold the entire program in your head." There are memory improvement techniques, developed over centuries, which can help. Think of it as latency reduction in a source code memory palace. http://mt.artofmemory.com/start

On the other hand, if you can do this and your co-workers can't, you may be tempted to write complex and entangled code, because the implications of each line are perfectly obvious to you.

Or you end up with something like Git, which is easy to use if you have the exact same background/education/philosophy as the person who wrote it, but has terrible usability for pretty much everybody else.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#43

Post by myth_buster »

I think this can be answered using analogy of a painter or a writer,

wherein you look at their body of work and think how is this possible

when it takes ages for me to finish a rather mediocre painting/blog.

The more time you spend with your stack the better you will get

as you develop something akin to muscle memory and a deep buffer

as evident with say a pianist or guitarist.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#44

Post by cpncrunch »

dualogy wrote: post #7
hluska wrote: post #4

In 2007, I finished my bba, received an angel investment, and started a company. Three months later (and with my investor's enthusiastic support), I started a non-profit street magazine. About two years later, I ended up in hospital with stroke symptoms and blood pressure on the 'how are you alive?' end of the scale. Because of this, I beg anyone who wants to be as highly productive as I was to please take care of yo…

So out of curiosity, in your case, was this overworked + crappy diet + lack of physical activity, or was this overworked + healthy/balanced/junk-free diet + some modicum of regular physical activity?

Burnout doesn't really have anything to do with diet or exercise. I suffered from it with a good diet and exercise. It's basically just your brain shutting down your stress system due to excessive long-term stress and/or negative outlook.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#45

Post by stdbrouw »

Hadley Wickham has done a lot of really cool stuff, but how would you know whether he's exceptionally productive? You're probably thinking "well, what we see in terms of visible artifacts must only be the tip of the iceberg, he's probably killing it at work, at home and academically too." But you don't really know that.

Nothing wrong with role models, but you're not going to help your work-life balance by comparing yourself to only their best and most visible output.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#47

Post by larrys »

swalsh wrote: post #29
nostrademons wrote: post #3

Never heard of the two people you mention, but I'll share what I've observed: The two biggest time sinks in everyday programming are 1.) communicating with everyone else and 2.) looking things up. If you can avoid these and have a quick analytical mind, you can basically program as quickly as you can type. So the secret to being insanely productive is to work as a solo programmer in a domain where you are thoroughly…

"looking things up" To expand on this point, it's not the time it takes to look things up. It's the loops of trying and failing. I've recently switched from C# to Ruby. In C# I'd consider myself as close to an expert as an ordinary man can get. I never had to look anything up, but more importantly... it was rare that I was confused why something didn't work. In fact most of the time when I saw something not work I kn…

I am not a programmer but I am able to do some "things". Starting with Unix in the 80's (and trying to do C) back when you had a book or two (and nobody to ask any questions). There were many times that I had to work 4 hours or longer just to figure out and iterate (to see what would actually work syntax wise) what I could easily search for today. One book or two, nobody to ask, total trial and error. I always tried to buy as many books as I could (which I typically had to find at a college bookstore an hour away) so I could at least triangulate an answer by a different discussion of the same point from different authors.

Also had those plastic syntax cheat sheets which I picked up.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#48

Post by petercooper »

I do not consider myself super productive but am often told I am, so I'm answering in that context. If I had one "secret" to what I do, it's that I'd rather half-ass many things than perfect only one or two, because half-assing is "good enough" for the sort of things I do (I should not be a civil engineer or nuclear physicist, naturally). When I see great people failing to get traction, I usually see a perfectionist unable to release their work quickly enough.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#49

Post by chuckcode »

edw519 wrote: post #13

1. Work on something that you MUST get done. 2. Plan your day the night before. 3. Wake up early and start working immediately. 4. Other people's "obstacles" are your opportunities to invent. 5. One day at a time, regrouping each night. 6. VERY short to do list at any given time. 7. 2 computers, work in 1 room, internet in another. 8. NO distractions while working (email, phone, others). 9. Short intense sprints with…

Like this list, very practical and pragmatic. Although normally reddit is not a place to go for increased productivity I thought PeaceH's guide for disciplined[1] was very helpful and provided a useful framework.

- Action: Get stuff done with focus, this is the part that most people think about when they say productive - Reflection: Have a clear vision of what you want to do and refine it as you go along - Influences: Interact and learn from others. Talk to people, read, give presentations, etc.

I see lots of people focus only on action and never make time for reflection and influence as they aren't obviously checking things off the todo list.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/2dd7yh/advi...

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#50

Post by walterbell »

iron_ball wrote: post #38
walterbell wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read an interview with Guido van Rossum, Jeff Dean, and Craig Silverstein within Google where they were asked basically the same question, and the answer all of them gave was "The ability to hold the entire program in your head." There are memory improvement techniques, developed over centuries, which can help. Think of it as latency reduction in a source code memory palace. http://mt.artofmemory.com/start

On the other hand, if you can do this and your co-workers can't, you may be tempted to write complex and entangled code, because the implications of each line are perfectly obvious to you.

If you invest the time into acquiring a faster and larger mental cache, you are unlikely to handicap your hard-earned capability with complex code. In fact, the new visibility can increase simplification and reuse.

The same restraint doesn't apply to someone naturally gifted with an exceptional memory, since they never went through the acculturation phase :)

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