Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I'm Up to Now

martinfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 142 posts

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#11

Post by diskzero »

Fowler states: I’ve long known that when you’re doing very creative work, such as writing or programming, the useful hours you can do in a day is rather less than the accepted industrial eight.

I don't want to disagree with him as this is quite subjective, but when I am totally engrossed in solving a problem, I get into a flow and the time flies by. If the problem is both interesting and challenging, I can't wait to get back to working on it and I hate having to stop!

I do agree if the work is joyless and the product is tedious, one hour spent on it can certainly seem like eight.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#12

Post by peakaboo »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

You make different choices during the day and you do it against your own will at first. You won't feel like it, and your mind will tell you tomorrow, but since you expected that, you do it today.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#13

Post by _spduchamp »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

Don't live by other people's expectations. Always live by your own, and always reassess your expectations. One day at a time. Do something, or don't, no biggie.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#14

Post by ljm »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

I get there when I feel unsatisfied with the problems I'm solving. Maybe I ended up fighting fires for a day or two, say, and fighting fires doesn't bring me pleasure while my main body of work does. So, even though the fire fighting has immense value to those who benefit from the fires being put out, and I'm really good at doing what it takes to put them out quickly, I didn't start the fires myself and I didn't get my work done. I feel like a rescuer rather than an effective contributor and then I have to start trying to compensate for it.

This is also touching on burnout. There's just a kind of programming work that is mentally draining and unfulfilling because the underlying problems or mistakes are entirely self-inflicted. Spending time fixing shit that didn't have to be broken.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#15

Post by tcldr »

diskzero wrote: post #11

Fowler states: I’ve long known that when you’re doing very creative work, such as writing or programming, the useful hours you can do in a day is rather less than the accepted industrial eight. I don't want to disagree with him as this is quite subjective, but when I am totally engrossed in solving a problem, I get into a flow and the time flies by. If the problem is both interesting and challenging, I can't wait to…

I can only speak for myself, but I find the quality of output decreases pretty steeply after around six hours of flow. Determination can keep me going but I’ve learnt that it’s probably more efficient to just rest and return to it after a good night's sleep.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#16

Post by bumby »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

>how does one/how do we end up feeling like this?

For me personally, this feeling arises when I become overly focused on an end-state. My mitigation is focusing more on the process and trusting that, over time, the end-goal becomes a natural outcome of an effective process.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#17

Post by HighlandSpring »

diskzero wrote: post #11

Fowler states: I’ve long known that when you’re doing very creative work, such as writing or programming, the useful hours you can do in a day is rather less than the accepted industrial eight. I don't want to disagree with him as this is quite subjective, but when I am totally engrossed in solving a problem, I get into a flow and the time flies by. If the problem is both interesting and challenging, I can't wait to…

In my experience if I'm in flow for 14 hours and time flies it's because I'm doing a high-value refactor at roughly the right time (not premature)

If I'm doing a more open ended problem like modelling something from scratch (I have boxes and arrows on a piece of paper but the edge cases are still a mystery) then it's something I'll exhaust myself on much sooner

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#18

Post by sillysaurusx »

dvaun wrote: post #4

Near the end of his post, he writes: > I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me. Maybe this has been discussed in depth elsewhere, but my question in response to this is: how does one/how do we end up feeling like this? And how can you work toward not feeling this way?

The feeling never really goes away. For me at least.

I just accidentally raised $1,931 yesterday for Tensorfork Labs, a non-profit I started ... also yesterday. https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1431462744906141696

I was blown away that everyone suddenly offered so much support. We have people filling out notion docs (http://wiki.tensorfork.com/) and an active Google Chat chatroom with 12 interesting people in it. And to top it all off, Nat Friedman (Github CEO) DM'ed me last night and I'll be talking to him in approximately three hours.

You'd think I'd feel thrilled and like I'm extremely effective. I am thrilled, but all I feel is that I haven't done as much as I could. Talking and walking are two different things, and now that we've talked, it's time to walk the walk. But the truth is, I felt guilty sleeping most of today while everyone else has been talking excitedly. I felt that if I pushed myself a little harder, I could've been more effective, or more diligent, or lived up to my responsibilities more.

But that path leads to burnout. Good work is a marathon, and things take time. (Unfortunately it sometimes seems ~impossible to internalize that, and the temptation to sprint is always there.)

If you're looking for a mental hack to make the feeling go away, the only thing that helps me is to remind myself that even small deltas have value. My personal goal is to make imagenet2012 accessible to every programmer. It's a small, obscure itch that I am scratching for myself. But it's mine, and I can fix it, which is good enough.

So just do what you can, where you can, and be authentic. No one can know how things will play out. Doing your best is all you can ask of yourself.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#19

Post by wtactual »

javaunsafe2019 wrote: post #8
seibelj wrote: post #2

Martin Fowler has been a big advocate of micro services. I think micro services has been one of the biggest mistakes ever promulgated on software development and is responsible for developer misery, un-productivity, failed projects, and unintelligible rats nests that have set back a generation of engineers who have to now unlearn all of this nonsense. I can’t take him seriously and he is forever tainted in my mind. H…

Maybe you and them just did not understand that it’s an pattern that, as all pattern, makes only sense for certain applications. Maybe you could also present some references that back up your claims? It’s always easy to judge on people that tried to solve problems of the past. Mistakes will always be made but this way we do learn and make progress. So what I try to say is maybe appreciate that he at least tried to so…

Fowler and "Uncle Bob" are in different solar systems. Fowler may get things wrong, but he's not a total hack like Bob. "The Clean Coder" is one of the most disgusting things I've ever read.

Flagged for accuracy.

Re: What I'm Up to Now

#20

Post by javaunsafe2019 »

conta_opin_99 wrote: post #10
javaunsafe2019 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you and them just did not understand that it’s an pattern that, as all pattern, makes only sense for certain applications. Maybe you could also present some references that back up your claims? It’s always easy to judge on people that tried to solve problems of the past. Mistakes will always be made but this way we do learn and make progress. So what I try to say is maybe appreciate that he at least tried to so…

If you build your whole life around didactic speaking gigs where you tell everyone how to do it despite apparently not writing any software yourself, you need to be prepared to be open to some criticism when it turns out your ideas are shit.

True but then please try to back up your hard claims with some references. Fowler himself made the restrictions of the microservice pattern very clear in several posts…

So don’t blame him for stupid architectural design decisions!

Post reply on HN