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Programmers need to start meditating

jacob.gold

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Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#71

Post by pantulis »

Tarq0n wrote: post #60
wolvoleo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the subject: some people find meditation very helpful, others find it a net negative, or useless, or impossible to do. So a categorical "you should do this" isn't correct or particularly helpful. Try it, if it works for you, great; but don't put it about that people who aren't doing it are being negligent in some way Absolutely. I've tried mediation in many situations and some classes but it's just not for me. M…

Relaxation isn't really a goal of meditation. When you do it you cultivate a kind of meta-cognition, an awareness of - and control over - the kind of invasive thinking that usually dominates our awareness. As a fellow ADHD person I didn't get out the first few times I tried, but now find it quite helpful.

This. It's like you end up growing your own PAUSE button for the rest of your day and you can break your own fourth wall.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#72

Post by inigyou »

bragh wrote: post #49
inigyou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> major catastrophes haven't happened yet because of vibe coding Didn't Azure, AWS and Cloudflare crash a few times in the second half of 2025 because of vibe coding?

They crashed yes, but not for too long and they did recover. And was it ever confirmed it was because of vibe coding? Not sure how much if any it even impacted their stock.

It was confirmed each was because of vibe coding.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#73

Post by varjag »

witx wrote: post #26
varjag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine for your pet projects. But for most of professional programming it's no longer feasible as you'll be at a small fraction of your machine assisted performance.

If you think performance relates to speed and amount of code per unit of time yes. If you're more grounded with the reality of software engineering then no

I have in fact masters in SE and three decades experience of commercial programming. Loved every minute of it (well except the burnout episode) and still do my hobby projects. So I would say no, you are wrong. The models decimate not just the coding (the best and the most fun part of development) but all the pseudo-engineering roles like architects or product managers too. Simply because there's less need for communication in the team as the surface of work for each dev is now quite enormous.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#74

Post by eimrine »

I have tried to research what "meditation" really means. I discovered that its meaning is somewhere between "doing nothing" and "processing ceremony". Now it easier for me to analyze those articles with such an optics.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#75

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #70
memoriyato3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's like "stop using a car, you can walk between cities and its healthier"

So far I see it more like "you buy a car to take you between cities, but you end up routinely driving even just 1 km to a store, +50 kg overweight and then prematurely dead due to a heart attack." But sure, if the most important thing is to mass produce tons of shitty code, it's your life - just don't give people dumb advice on what they NEED to do. :)

(putting aside the negative impact of the data centers on the planet, which is not "your life" anymore)

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#76

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

VorpalWay wrote: post #51
ehnto wrote: post #3

I have certainly noticed my stress skyrocket in this new mode of working. I was used to getting a lot done very quickly, with intense pockets of work followed downtime. Now it feels more like a steady stream of medium stress, and there is no opportunity to stop or drop the thread. I must admit, if this is the new way of doing software development (eg: not actually programming but working with LLMs) I am not going to…

One idea to consider might be going into safety critical embedded work (e.g. brake controllers, critical systems for airplanes/trains, medical devices, some industrial systems, ...). AI hasn't penetrated much here yet. It isn't at all clear how or if you would be able to certify the process for example. That might change with time, but for now, all I see AI used for is additional code review and side scripts/tooling…

> going into safety critical embedded work

The move-fast-break-things crowd is going to come after these as well, along with medical and defense software where lives are fully on the line. Sure, there will be failures and needless deaths and bombings of elementary schools, but that's just the price of being on the bandwagon.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#77

Post by wolvoleo »

Tarq0n wrote: post #60
wolvoleo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the subject: some people find meditation very helpful, others find it a net negative, or useless, or impossible to do. So a categorical "you should do this" isn't correct or particularly helpful. Try it, if it works for you, great; but don't put it about that people who aren't doing it are being negligent in some way Absolutely. I've tried mediation in many situations and some classes but it's just not for me. M…

Relaxation isn't really a goal of meditation. When you do it you cultivate a kind of meta-cognition, an awareness of - and control over - the kind of invasive thinking that usually dominates our awareness. As a fellow ADHD person I didn't get out the first few times I tried, but now find it quite helpful.

For me it just doesn't work but everyone is different, that's my point. And the relaxation is a prerequisite for having control.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#78

Post by ifwinterco »

wolvoleo wrote: post #44
ajb wrote: post #16

This isn't the worst article, and it's triggered a decent amount of discussion (despite being very short). However, I really dislike "What you're doing wrong/failing to do" titles. They are intended to trigger anxiety, which is manipulative and (in this case) precisely contradicts the concern the author is purporting to have for the rest of us. On the subject: some people find meditation very helpful, others find it…

> On the subject: some people find meditation very helpful, others find it a net negative, or useless, or impossible to do. So a categorical "you should do this" isn't correct or particularly helpful. Try it, if it works for you, great; but don't put it about that people who aren't doing it are being negligent in some way Absolutely. I've tried mediation in many situations and some classes but it's just not for me. M…

It being boring is part of the point - normally your brain is constantly stimulated so it does indeed feel strange and uncomfortable when that stimulus is taken away.

Pushing through that is what leads to progress.

Meditation is like physical exercise, it's not exactly "fun" at the time, you sort of have to learn to enjoy it, but it's never easy. Like exercise the real reward is backloaded

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#79

Post by senfiaj »

gb2d_hn wrote: post #20
senfiaj wrote: post #10

>> I’m clearly much more productive now. I’m doing five things at once very effectively, switching between multiple agent sessions from morning to night. Joel Spolsky disagrees here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/02/12/human-task-switche...

I feel like it depends on the task, and that's why people seem to disagree on this. Think about a manager managing 5 devs. If he is working on planning and managing work for his dev team, we don't say he is task switching, he's just taking a management role where he takes a high level view of the task at hand and then delegates the deep dive. Where it differs for devs is that we could in theory run multiple agents co…

>> I feel like it depends on the task, and that's why people seem to disagree on this. Think about a manager managing 5 devs. If he is working on planning and managing work for his dev team, we don't say he is task switching, he's just taking a management role where he takes a high level view of the task at hand and then delegates the deep dive.

This is assuming you fully trust AI code. AI is still not perfect and sometimes might produce code with insufficient quality even when it works. For example, it can fix a bug in a wrong way, such as removing the symptoms instead of fixing the root cause. And so on. Also, I still have to review and test that generated code, especially in complex systems. Yes, AI reduces coding time, but at the expense of increasing the review / testing time, and review is not something all developers enjoy (both as reviewer and someone who is reviewed). This still doesn't seem to be something that has negligible cost of context switching. Also, AI tends to make you more lazy and care less about understanding the requirements. I'll prefer manual coding with some AI assistance for boring / repetitive tasks and finding potential mistakes for software that I care.

Re: Programmers need to start meditating

#80

Post by throw-the-towel »

embedding-shape wrote: post #43
ehnto wrote: post #3

I have certainly noticed my stress skyrocket in this new mode of working. I was used to getting a lot done very quickly, with intense pockets of work followed downtime. Now it feels more like a steady stream of medium stress, and there is no opportunity to stop or drop the thread. I must admit, if this is the new way of doing software development (eg: not actually programming but working with LLMs) I am not going to…

Not sound harsh but that the people who solved problems with code just because they love coding disappears from problem-solving environments does sounds like a win-win for everyone involved. I've both been in situations where I loved coding the solution more than I want the problem solved, and I got in the way of people who just wanted the solution, and vice-versa where architect-astronauts are more interested in cod…

Loving code does not necessarily mean being an architecture astronaut.
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