251–260 of 534 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. Do you think we will ever get a pill to replace exercise?
Exercise is a source of enjoyment, why would you want to replace that?
This is kind of where I always have been, I find exercise to be a loathsome and boring chore, a necessary evil that gets in the way of things I would rather be doing.
Sleep, exercise, chess
You're having trouble finding the motivation to deeply understand the original API.
So, cheat your brain with busy work:
- find typical use cases (hopefully the original was written around use cases)
- use it in the original language, write toy programs
- look for concepts and symmetry (i.e. open/close, add/remove, handles, whatever) that reduce the cognitive load
- mock a rough translation in the target language (it's not final code, hacky works)
- slowly port your toys
- watch for gaps... wash, rinse, repeat.
In the meantime, sometimes finding something mechanical to pursue that moves the job forward may help.
For example, mocking all API calls in the target language, following the original structure. TDD? Build a tool to make the target API shims?
It takes time to absorb something that's not calling you, but you can get there.
When you were 25 you lacked the experience to see Porting this API will require a deep understanding of the existing API and, ignoring that obvious complexity, allowed you to move really fast. Also you get those nagging feelings of futility about doing a mechanical task (translating an API) when you know you (or anything else) will 1) make mistakes and 2) have to do it again in five years anyway. There are two times…
My personal thinking is that there's a lot of social malaise and hopelessness that's affecting people mentally right now for these and possibly other reasons that's contributing to this mental fog. People are checked out right now.
> Whether you're very scared of Covid or not the least bit scared, everybody is frustrated with still dealing with it and the measures they have to go through.
> Prices of everything are going up, layoffs are happening, and there's a general sense in the air that the economic calamity that's possible is just getting started and there's nothing you can do about the coming bad times.
> For lots of complex reasons, one of the biggest traditional sources of joy (people creating families) has been plummeting and possibly getting worse in this time period.
> Everybody, regardless of political idealogy, has some big topic to feel hopeless about. Some people think the world is ending due to climate change, some people think the world is ending due to Putin, some people think the world is ending due to economic migration, etc. This is subjective, but there's a limited real aspirational message of hope for the future that most could agree with and see unambiguous positivity from.
I know the feeling. I'm 62 and I can't go as long or as deep as I once could, but I've changed my strategy over the years and although I'm not as fast as I once was I'm still pretty productive. What I do is log virtually everything I'm doing in an editor window that I keep open all the time (one file per project/task). If I get disturbed by a call or a colleague, I can do a quick recap and get back to where I was. Li…
So I bought an A4 hardback notebook, and started logging everything I did. I wish I had been doing that since I started in this business; it's a really good work habit.
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Personal anecdote: I'm around the same age as OP and until recently also felt like my thinking was slowing down over the years. I went for many years without an exercise habit. About 5 months ago I started lifting weights. The transformation has defied all my expectations and the biggest unexpected benefit is that my mind has become sharper, faster and more focused. I essentially feel like I've reversed a decade's wo…
My girlfriend got sick and now I have a part time caring responsibility that’s mostly about doing chores and errands. I’m in better physical shape now and oddly feel more capable at my engineering job.