Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014)

#251

Post by john-tells-all » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

mtsr wrote: post #196

ideamotor wrote: post #167

Interruptions are very challenging with any deep work that takes hours. This is true. What I am facing however, is a related issue. Perhaps because I have not been doing much programming lately, I find it increasingly difficult to actually get and be in the zone. When I go in, I go all in, and enter a kind of fugue state where the hours slip away. While for some this may sound advantageous, in the past, it has been a…

I would recommend trying the pomodoro method: 25 minutes of work, 5 minute break away from screens, repeat. 30 minute break after a few cycles. I’ve discovered I’m much more in touch with my mental and emotional state and even a five minute break will really relieve some of the pressure you put on your mind and body. Also because it’s just for 25 minutes anyway, it’s much easier to get started again, even with unfun…

Seconded. Pomodoro is wonderful for engineers: it rapidly teaches us to build up a "focus muscle". We start focusing at the beginning of a 25 min cycle, and consciously relax the focus at the end. If I walk around for 5 minutes and do low-impact things like dishes/laundry it helps.

My channel has a short talk recommending Pomodoro for engineers, including using it with Agile. The methods are extremely similar. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PGaH-sVPGIdFUC88FgMmw

Re: Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014)

#252

Post by binkHN » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

eggy wrote: post #225

H8crilA wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what made you keep a job with such unreasonably high stress from the upper management? I would've told them to fuck off at some point, probably the second or third time someone is being this unreasonable.

First, solve the problem at hand. Second, then make your grievances. Always take the high road, and debate later, unless it's a life or death situation. Principles before personalities.

> Principles before personalities.

Love this.

Re: Programmers, teach non-geeks the true cost of interruptions (2014)

#253

Post by lamontcg » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #248

lamontcg wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't triage the unknown

Triage involves getting insight into running systems, particularly how well they are performing, or not performing, at many levels of granularity. You can make the act of triaging more efficient by building tools that give you quick insight and help you narrow down what is and isn't working, and how it's failing. I spent years working on V8 and we consistently invested in tools, tests, processes, and best practices t…

> try to figure out why it takes you so long to know anything about anything.

External dependencies changing without warning at the worst possible times. And many of them we can't arbitrarily prune because when you boil it down they ultimately support things which have a contract value associated with them. The system is large and complicated, mostly necessarily so, which makes it brittle. We spent time making it less brittle and attacking the complexity, but its still large and brittle. We don't get to go back to startup square 1 where we don't have those kinds of contracts and get to reconsider the business decisions that have been made over the past decade.