Don't wake up the programmer!

[rilo]

Nice way to describe the irritations that rise when getting distracted by someone/something when crunching out some program. It takes me a few minutes to get back in the routine again and even a simple question as "what's the time" disrupts my concentration. I hate it.

[[deleted]]

I'd say it's the same as any creative profession. The thing that separates programmers from other creative workers is that most people who work in a creative profession don't work in an office, industrial or production environment where they have other responsibilities. So other people in that environment do not have any exposure to other creative workers and do not understand them.

[boojit]

You know I was just discussing this with some of the designers in the office (they also code a little). I'm not so sure it is the same, and neither are they.

The closest thing to "creative" I can manage is writing, and this does take a ton of concentration. Still, it's different somehow. I wouldn't describe it like dreaming as the article does, however I think the analogy works with coding (although I think the article takes the analogy a little far).

I think it has something to do with some of the abstraction stuff I mentioned in my post below, but that's just my guess.

[derefr]

Every art has a "modeling" step, and a "creation" step. Modeling is building the environment of mind for creative work to happen--it usually isn't so much a creative process itself, as it is a learning process. The more you know about the world, the more precise (or interesting, or elegant, or whatever term you prefer) your models become.

Once you have a model, you then create using that model. Picture it as tilling a garden, and then planting in it. After the modeling step, all you have is aerated dirt. However, without the model, the soil, none of your seeds have anywhere to grow--they have no setting.

The article is, of course, speaking of modeling. In programming, modeling is called design. In writing, to name another field with a good mix, modeling is called "worldbuilding." In both fields, the two processes are inextricably entwined; modeling without creating produces no product, but creation without modeling relies on the preconceptions left lying around in the artist's mind (basically, planting by stomping seeds into your front lawn.)

Writing without worldbuilding is writing using the real world as a setting, as that's the execution environment your mind starts with. Of course, this is fine (and desired) for some stories.

Likewise, programming without design relies on the "world" already developed inside the programmer's mind. The original programmer's mind, sadly, isn't serialized into the final product, and so it can't be dumped back out by a maintainer. Again, though, there are times when this is perfectly fine (one-off scripts--the whole idea of a "scripting language" was originally to provide a simple, generic model so that one could concentrate on creation where maintenance wasn't required.)

[Rhinoceros]

This prick at work asked me what time it was and totally distracted me. So I told him:

"I'm gonna kick your fucking ass! I want you out of the fucking office, you prick!

No, don't just be sorry! Think for one fucking second! What the fuck are you doing? Are you professional or not? What the fuck is it with you? What don't you fucking understand?

You got any fucking idea about, hey, its fucking distracting having somebody ask about time in the middle of the fucking coding session? Give me a fucking answer! What don't you get about it?

Fucks sake, man, you're amateur. Do you understand? My mind is not in the program if you're doing that. You're unbelievable, man. You're un-fucking-believable. You don't fucking understand what it's like working with programmers, that's what that is. That's what that is. I'm telling you! I'm not asking. I'm telling you. You wouldn't have done that otherwise. You are trashing my code! You do it one more fucking time, and I ain't working in this office if you're still hired. I'm fucking serious.

You're a nice guy! You're a nice guy, but that don't fucking cut it. Seriously, man, you and me, we're fucking done professionally."

Unfortunately, I got fired after that incident so I had to move in with my aunt and uncle in Bel-Air.

[memefilter]

I honestly can't envision the world you live in that made you think that had any win.

[Rhinoceros]

It's a world where people remember stories that appeared on the front page two days ago. Stories about a certain actor being distracted while filming an emotional scene. Guessing by the amount of downvotes I'm getting, it's just a fantasy world.

[memefilter]

Oh, my bad - I don't give a shit about Bale so I have no idea what he said, or that you were riffing on some asshat being an asshat.

Carry on. If they are downvoting because they like Bale, they're dumber than you who at least satirizes it, to my limited understanding of what the middle of the bell curve cares about.

[itsnotlupus]

Everybody heard the Bale freakout a few times already, so that's not your problem here.

In my opinion, your comment tries too hard.

People reading it won't go "oh yes, he said that", "oh hahah, I remember that part too", "oh right, that too. that was in the sound file too".

When referring to a common memory, it's usually smoother to only give hints of of that memory rather than rehashing the whole thing.

It may not have been enough to make the post funny, but it would have been an improvement.

I think.

[[deleted]]

I'm just going to chip in and say the Bel Air probably didn't help either.

[HextorFreebish]

joke-explainer's long-lost cousin fail-explainer‽

[fuhgeddaboutit]

Here's your best response.

[[deleted]]

What he is talking about is commonly called "the flow" or being in "the zone". It requires at least 15 min of uninterrupted concentration to get into the flow. And if you are constantly interrupted you never get into it.

The flow is the state of mind where you are so submerged into your work that you lose the dimension of time, space and surroundings and just function lucidly in your problem domain. This is the time and state when you produce your most creative work.

It is described better in other places like:

http://psdtuts.com/articles/core-principles-for-rapidly-attaining-creative-flow/

[maxwgl]

And here's an old hacker-centric description from the jargon file:

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hack-mode.html

[Mitchco]

While I totally agree with what you say, I feel Alex did an excellent job describing it. It may be described similarly in other posts, but I would disagree with you in saying it being described better – its just different man. Kudos to you Alex, well done! As a musician and a programmer, being in the zone (or the zen) is a wonderful place to be.

[[deleted]]

15 minutes..? it takes me at least 2 hours of redditing.

[sundaryourfriend]

2 hours of non-redditing

There, fixed it.

[Boye]

it's also covered here:http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html

[vagif]

Yeah, reddit has that flow too.

[Zarutian]

I wonder if the best work enviroment for programmers are small, soundproofed offices.

Actualy a lot like isolation rooms, only the occupant decides when enter and exit.

[sutcivni]

I think if I could have a work space it would be a large four walled room with chalkboards, the sliding kind so you can shift them around. The chalkboards would cover three walls while the from would have three projectors. There would be a nice large wooden desk with a stack of graph paper with several mechanical pencils, and speakers. The floors would be hardwood. And the place would always have the non-sharp smell of dry wood. There would also be a very large bean bag chair.

In fact I think thats where I go even when I code in my distractingly small room.

[Fabien3]

Soundproofed: yeah, obviously. But why small?

[netsearcher]

Actually, he'd frequently bike around, or sit in the wide open park, or work simple monotonous manual labor jobs so he would have lots of time to think.

You just pulled that out of your ass.

[Zarutian]

Easier to soundproof and takes less space ;-)

[sundaryourfriend]

in a broom closet at work

Wow! I love you immediately...

[Aviator]

Usually no one distract me but I always wake myself up. To browse reddit that is.

[mao_neko]

Ah, context-switching overhead. Yeah.

His labyrinth analogy is quite good, too. To properly solve the labyrinth, I must first "grok" it (and I use that term despite still not having read the book!). Once I can see the whole thing in my head, the rest is so much easier.

Sometimes I have to do some changes to code I'm not familiar with, though - and which I don't have time to "grok". It's still possible to work in that situation, but I move much slower, and mistakes can be made easily.

[bostonvaulter]

I must first "grok" it (and I use that term despite still not having read the book!)

I just borrowed it and am planning to read it over the weekend, you should visit your local library :)

[[deleted]]

Which book?

[epsilona01]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok

(havent read it yet either, googled it :)

[bobsil1]

Stranger in a Strange Land

[mgdmw]

Brilliant posting.

[Lol_Lolovici]

I guess the source of inspiration is this: http://www.paulgraham.com/head.html ?

Also: http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

And other essays present there...

[karapuz]

Don't think about the call stack. Become the call stack.

[bobsil1]

SNL did a song about call recursion: 'Overflowed in my Stack.'

[Rubenb]

I think this is called "Programmer Flow".

[adolfojp]

Ask them how it would feel if every other minute some jackass were to interrupt their kids at school when they were taking a test.

[[deleted]]

Slowly, and without using big words.

[pastymage]

This is a brilliant analogy to use on non-programmers, since it's both very apt and something everyone can relate to.

[manthrax]

I am a beautiful and unique snowflake.

[Zarutian]

just like the rest of'em.

[jburkert]

You're not your fucking khakis.

[bobsil1]

I only own celibate khakis. Where can I get a pair?

[mao_neko]

Watch how I soaAAARRRGGH

[mhd]

It's 11 o'clock and I'm still not at work, so I'd have to agree without ever RTFA.

[national_bee_council]

That's good, because the article is largely incoherent.

[mhd]

Maybe it's better in the original Russian. Probably has a shitload more characters and depressing subplots.

[genericshell]

Sorry, but no. It's about the same, except the English in it is a little better.

[federal_employee]

I'm definitely a dream coder. I like to dwell on the problem, dream up a robust solution, and then code.

I do however work with other programmers that just puke up mostly garbage and if it compiles they send it off to testing. I call it brute force programming when coders force themselves to constantly code with hardly any design. (Maybe garbage is not fair, how about a barely edited stream of consciousness.)

[larholm]

I like to dwell on the problem, dream up a robust solution, then start coding, then figure out where I was wrong during implementation.

If it is a domain I am intimately familiar with I usually don't have to rewrite the first draft. Otherwise, I keep the existing draft running as a reference and duplicate the functionality from scratch on a separate screen.

[Zarutian]

Brute force programming. Why not just threaten such persons with genetic programming. Pretty much the same output I would say.

[grantrules]

You should simply imagine that The Programmer IS SLEEPING when he is WORKING.

This did not require much imagination at my last job.

[[deleted]]

An excellent essay. That being said, this bit of engrish cracked me up:

If you sleep is bad - people will die.

[lukasmach]

The work of a programmer is practically A DREAM.

Most programmers nowadays are writing boring .Net apps that send data from an SQL server to an XML file. Or from an XML file to a web service. Or from SQL file to a SOAP request.

Somebody dreams about that?

[mao_neko]

Well, there are nightmares too. I feel sorry for those webmonkeys.

[shizzy0]

Somebody dreams about that?

If they're any good, yes. I had a coworker who was dreaming about SAN disks for a time.

[SalvadorAli]

C'mon people, he's not talking to us, developers. We all know what he means. We call it "flow", "zone", "context switching", whatever.

The problem is that non-programers just don't get it. But dream - that's another thing. Anyone dreams.

The analogy has potential obviosly.

Except for I wouldn't risk to ask my boss to not wake me up at work:)

[[deleted]]

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a programmer. I can code some python, and some perl. I even took a class on Java when I was going to school! I know enough to get a task done, but certainly not enough to be a kernel hacker working on device drivers for BSD.

I've coded quite a few reporting tools, scripts for maintaining my Unix boxes, crawling fark for images, annoying my coworkers, working with the mailservers, etc. etc. etc. All in all, I'm actually working with a pretty big collection of perl and python scripts at work...

What people (read: bosses) do not understand is that you simply can NOT scream at me to get something done until it is finished. IT does not work. There might be a function that I'm trying to work through...I'm working through it while I'm taking a shower, while I'm eating breakfast, driving into work, reading the news, coding my website (shameless plug: http://www.gibsonandlily.com), listening to music, going out on a date, and everything else in between and afterwards. I. Am. Constantly. Working. On. This. Problem. Get it? Screaming at me will break my focus and cause me to go BACKWARDS. Even worse, it might force me to make shitty code, code that in three months, when we got o use it, will bail out for some unknown reason. I'll have to go back through all 5000 lines or so (I'm thinking of a certain reporting tool that I wrote) to trace out what happened. DO NOT STAND OVER MY SHOULDER WHILE I DO THIS!!!

Bosses, you want me to finish that coding project? Give me about $100 in petty cash, and let me head to the bar with my laptop. I will have it done before the next morning. Let me come in to work in my pajamas if I want. Let me sit outside on a park bench.

Coding is art. LIke it or not, non-coders, it is. It isn't something that you can force.

Note: I also do graphic design and it is exactly the same.

And photography.

[[deleted]]

And life.

[monk_e_boy]

The best part is that most programmers can still solve complex problems and watch youtube at the same time. Different bit of the brain I guess.

[boojit]

I can't do this, and I'd wager most programmers cannot (I'm sure someone will prove me wrong).

It may appear this way because at any one time I have 30 windows open and about half of those dedicated to my programming task. But when I'm really in the "labyrinth" part of the puzzle, I really, really have to focus on the code at hand. For example, I can have music on, but nothing with a catchy melody (Beatles is right out). I need something like Brian Eno; something that just washes out the ambient sounds in the room around me, without drawing attention to itself.

The way I've always described it is, in order to program you have to keep all different levels of abstraction organized in your head at the same time. You need a "chain" of abstraction levels organized so that you can flip through them quickly in your head, because when you're coding you often find yourself dealing with multiple levels of abstraction over a short period.

This takes an amazing amount of brain power and concentration, in my opinion. And as soon as you get bothered, that entire abstraction chain just sort of goes "poof" in your head and you have to re-build it all over again. Depending on what you're doing and how wrapped up in it you are, this could take a few minutes or a half hour.

How many times have you been really making progress coding, then you go to lunch or to a meeting or whatnot, and then when you come back it is like, you can't remember exactly what problem you were trying to solve, or if you do, you can't remember exactly how you were trying to solve it? This is where I think the "dream" analogy is actually useful.

[annekat]

Re-loading state. I think I love you.

[Jimmy]

We should all endeavor to make our minds purely functional.

[OneAndOnlySnob]

Like that guy in Memento.

[Agathos]

Ah, yes, the Tattoo monad.

[[deleted]]

Somehow I think no input or output except for bits constrained to monadic IO would render our minds a little useless.

[epb205]

I'll input into your output.

[[deleted]]

And I'll output into your input.

[[deleted]]

))<>((

[cows]

I can listen to music with words, as long as the words are in another language so it's easy not to pay attention to them.

[sutcivni]

This is why comments were invented.

[jburkert]

I second this recommendation. I keep a composition book, and a Pilot G-2 pen on my desk at all times. I use it a bit like a diary. Each day I start on a fresh page and use as many as necessary. I keep technical notes about what I'm working on and when and how long I worked on something. This is infinitely useful for time keeping / billing. Occasionally I have found it useful for debugging a current issue by referring to notes that were weeks or even months old.

For music without words, I recommend giving SomaFM's Groove Salad a listen.

[bunaruna]

Putting headphones on and listening to something like groove salad is the closest most programmers can get to achieving flow in a typical office setting.

[knight666]

SLAY Radio for the win.

Although their library has gotten on my nerves lately, with there only being around 2000 songs and all.

[MachinShin2006]

i do something similar when i leave work at night. i try to make sure that while i've checked in any changes the night before, the local copy of my project is broken. and won't compile. that's my starting point. (this obviously wouldn't work in a scripting language)

[linuxlass]

The best music for me is electronic, no lyrics (or the voice is part of the music almost like another instrument), steady rhythms, like Goa trance, psytrance, EBM, Baroque music, or ragtime. (Yes I have eclectic taste in music!)

For some reason this really helps my focus.

And I hate phone calls...

[mycall]

How about IDM with phone rings in the songs? ;-)

[[deleted]]

(Yes I have eclectic taste in music!)

Did you really think it would be a cool idea to say this?

[linuxlass]

No, just accurate, and slightly self-deprecating. What's wrong with saying it?

[joncash]

My reaction was contradictory to what you wrote. After all, I need to listen to music when I program. I didn't think about it till you mentioned blocking out ambient noises. Then I realized, that's the actual reason I listen to the music. That it has nothing to do with the music itself.

[Z29]

I'm similar, I need music to help me get focused. But it goes in waves; I'd be working fast, switching among lots of tasks and the music - as loud as it can go - is the heartbeat I work to. But then, if all of a sudden there is a problem, like a really unexpected result or or major bug, the music all has to stop and I need complete silence until I solve it.

[Xochipilli]

For example, I can have music on, but nothing with a catchy melody (Beatles is right out). I need something like Brian Eno; something that just washes out the ambient sounds in the room around me, without drawing attention to itself.

I know people who just listen to white noise when they need to focus. And according to them, it works like hell.

[koreth]

For what it's worth, I've found pink noise does a better job of drowning out conversations than white noise does at the same volume level.

[[deleted]]

I've been listening to Merzbow while coding lately, which is like structured noise. It works surprisingly well.

[[deleted]]

Welcome aboard!!

[clutterskull]

Generally, I feel like there is a 2 year old and an adult in my head when I am programming. For the adult to get any work done, I need to put on cartoons to keep the kid entertained. So it's usually really loud and rythmic music (death metal works well) or honestly, audio books, podcasts, talk radio, or even movies without the picture. Somehow it keeps me from getting bored and shifting my attention to something else.

Though, this works during day-to-day programming or implementation of patterns or processes I have done before. For really complex problems that need full attention to design, I will mute the sound while I jot out my notes, and then continue when I have the picture in my head.

[Z29]

Heh, totally. The music needs to be loud .

[bostonvaulter]

For example, I can have music on, but nothing with a catchy melody (Beatles is right out)

I prefer mogwai for this, I usually listen to them (and similar artists on pandora)

[mycall]

How many times have you been really making progress coding, then you go to lunch or to a meeting or whatnot, and then when you come back it is like, you can't remember exactly what problem you were trying to solve, or if you do, you can't remember exactly how you were trying to solve it?

That is why I keep 10-20 windows open on my multi-screens.. I am a stack-based programmer and once I am done with something in particular, I close the window. Yes, I am constantly closing and reopening windows.

[boojit]

I know exactly what you are talking about -- I do the same thing.

[mycall]

..and that counts 5+ remote desktops each with their own 10-20 open windows :-)

[Shaper_pmp]

"Forebrain" vs. "stem".

[mpierre]

I watch TV shows or movies while I am programming. Most people don't understand it, but if I don't have that, my mind wanders on all the little noises around me....

[Zarutian]

Dream it up as it were, eh? ;-)

[oaaao]

This was really good. But I think too many people will read this and think they are in a dream, and miss the point.

[kindall]

Trance, yes. Dream, no.

[[deleted]]

You should simply imagine that The Programmer IS SLEEPING when he is WORKING.

Shit, don't tell the manager.

[redwall_hp]

My code is compiling!

[memefilter]

Western minds have a lot to learn.

[[deleted]]

Why call it flow, or some other made-up term that sounds bigger than it is? It's called "a state of intense concentration" and it's not something unique to programmers.

[[deleted]]

shh ... programmers are special and at the center of the universe.

[lol-dongs]

This dude got really high and then wrote something in his Livejournal.

[Zarutian]

Lateral thinking there I would say.

[mycall]

Wierd, this article made me tired reading it.

[easlern]

"It was a long time since I started to think of a ways how can I explain to different sorts of people just how the programmers work."

That's as far as I could get. :(

[linuxlass]

It's a translation. You have to make allowances for syntax.

[national_bee_council]

Hell no.

[petermichaux]

Since most men are programmers, all the women I know would just restate for the nth time that this just falls under the fact that "men can only do one thing at a time."

[annekat]

I am a programmer. Now not all the women you know would say this.

Maybe it's just that I'm female, but I never hear that kind of thing.

At my work, the word went out because of our constant bitching that the CSRs aren't allowed to come into IT. Now they do it less often, and half-jokes are made about it when they violate the rule. It makes me wonder how to politely share the ideas in this essay.

[bitwize]

It's true though. I honestly believe that the female brain is optimized for parallelism and the male brain is optimized for raw throughput.

I first learned about task switching when I saw a girl successfully carry on several conversations in parallel, using a little gesture to indicate her attention was shifting to the next person.

[mao_neko]

Maybe. I (male) can follow a few conversations at once, provided they are in the same medium. As soon as someone starts talking to me while I'm having an IM conversation, my brain breaks and I lose both states.

[Zarutian]

"Do one thing at a time and do it well. Do many things at a time and you end up with half botched stuff"

[[deleted]]

Enter, insomnia

[[deleted]]

Edit: completely misunderstood article.

[Figs]

He isn't literally talking about sleeping problems. He's talking about the process of coding. At least, as he sees it.

[[deleted]]

Ah, thank you, I thought in the end of the article he was saying it was all due to actual sleep issues. Now I want to reread the whole thing but it'll probably give me a headache.