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Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

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Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#41

Post by ssgodderidge »

zcbenz wrote: post #39

Since several years ago I was starting to have health issues that if I sat still for too long my eyes/arms/legs/waist would feel pain, sometimes fiercely. So I set a timer to remind me to stop staring at the monitor and stand up to do some light exercise, at first the timer was 40 minutes and in recent years it became 20 minutes as my body wears. So now my work is interrupted every 20 minutes, at first the timer was…

Sorry to hear about the need to take breaks; that sucks. Glad you’re able to work around it, though.

I suspect the physical exercise is key to your effectiveness there. There’s a big difference between a pause for a stretch and a pause for a message about an entirely different workstream.

Not all interruptions are created equal.

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#43

Post by thepostman0 »

darkteflon wrote: post #40
asdff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its especially helpful for stuff where I haven't touched it in a while too. One alias and boom, I'm back in a session with a pane with my editor open, a pane with the log, a pane with some notes, and a pane with the shell displaying the last line of code I ran from when I was last working on this pet project over six months ago. Right where I left everything and I can jump back in as if I was working on it an hour ag…

I have a separate VS Code window connected to a dev container for each project that stays open for days, weeks or months at a time. Does the tmux approach materially improve upon that setup? Genuinely curious if I’m missing out on something here.

Maybe, you can SSH to GNU Screen and attach where you were, perhaps from your phone to just read. You could do the same with rdesktop to something x11, but you'd need more than a 256MB VM for that. If you have this running 24x365 then you'd spend more energy/money.

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#44

Post by sethammons »

postalrat wrote: post #42

Context switching is a skill you can and will improve as you get interrupted throughout your career.

that is one of the arguments in favor of the pomodoro productivity technique. For the unaware, pomodoro says to set a timer and do 25min of non-distracted work. Come up for air (mandatory stop) for 5 minutes. Rinse and repeat a few times. Some studies claim it takes 20min to get into the zone, but pomodoro insists on breaking that flow about 5 minutes later. The end result is training yourself to pick back up where you were at. I don't do pomodoro any longer but it was reasonably effective back when I tried it years ago.

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#46

Post by ipaddr »

sethammons wrote: post #44
postalrat wrote: post #42

Context switching is a skill you can and will improve as you get interrupted throughout your career.

that is one of the arguments in favor of the pomodoro productivity technique. For the unaware, pomodoro says to set a timer and do 25min of non-distracted work. Come up for air (mandatory stop) for 5 minutes. Rinse and repeat a few times. Some studies claim it takes 20min to get into the zone, but pomodoro insists on breaking that flow about 5 minutes later. The end result is training yourself to pick back up where y…

This works..

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#47

Post by Turing_Machine »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #35
dangwhy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But managers don't care (and many co-workers also). i bet 99% of time people are interrupting themselves. Like i just did to browse HN.

A momentary distraction like a quick HN check is not the same as the context switching of, for example, going to a budget meeting while in the middle of trying to figure out some technical detail. Very different things.

Agree completely. A self-determined break is an entirely different thing from being interrupted by other people.

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#48

Post by mrighele »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #20

Sadly, the cost of context switching is well-known, and has been proven, over and over again, for decades. But managers don't care (and many co-workers also). A quick shufti at most modern open-plan offices, shows the contempt that managers have for developer context. They know better, and have made the conscious decision to go open, anyway. I remember visiting the Facebook/Instagram building, in NYC, and was aghast…

> But managers don't care (and many co-workers also).

For the majority, the cost is not that well known and in general they are not the ones paying for it, you are.

In particular for your colleagues it may be beneficial to disturb you because when they disturb you, you may lose concentration but the may in fact avoid losing it by quickly get an answer to their pending problem.

This is one aspect where LLMs may be very useful: asking something to a tool like ChatGPT may not be faster than asking a colleague, but if it avoids ruining the colleague's concentration it will be a net positive for the company. This is even more true if/when those model will incorporate specific internal knowledge (code, documentation) of the company.

Re: Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

#50

Post by m3kw9 »

m3kw9 wrote: post #49

XCode tip: if you open a new tab, your current tab is copied to the new tab. It allows you to branch off from your current tab if you don’t want to mess it up.

You can also rename an entire tab, but it’s hidden in the menus. Just search for rename from the help menu drop down
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