Programming is a mental juggling act. If I get distracted or stop unexpectedly, all the things come tumbling down to the floor and go bouncing and rolling to all corners of the room. It takes a lot of effort (and is no fun at all) to gather the things close, pick them all up, and start juggling again in an attempt to re-synchronize the moving parts in mental thin air.
Programming is Like a Dream
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Re: Programming is Like a Dream
#12This is precisely why, at work, when I need to speak to a programmer (I'm more of a project manager): I tend to Gchat them instead of walking over. I used to the opposite and felt anti-social when I g-chatted.
Now, if I want to avoid feeling anti-social, I walk over after the Gchat session has begun.
This way I know they've moved their attention to me on roughly their own time... and if they were coding they hopefully wouldn't even see my chat until they at least finished the roll they were on.
Another option is email, of course... but IMs have a much more 'I would like to talk in the near term' vibe to them!
(I've realized some of this by beginning to script more myself...)
Re: Programming is Like a Dream
#13I agree with the premise of the article and it draws some nice analogies, but there are so many of these "don't interrupt a developer when they're programming" posts now that it's starting to encourage conceit among developers. I'm a developer myself and get the point, but there's a bit of give and take when you work with other people. I used to do 'the zone' thing a lot, particularly when I didn't know what I was do…
Your comment just helped me realize another benefit of my current practice of keeping a “lab journal” of what I work on when I program. Looking back at my last few weeks of work, the few times I was interrupted, I was free to leave my task and deal with the interruption, because I had my current task and its context safely recorded for me to reload when I get back.
My journal-keeping system is described here: https://lobste.rs/s/gfemhn/software_engineers_should_keep_la....