A true software developer will also raise their hands in celebration when they finally solve a problem that’s been plaguing them.
Even if you’re working from home, alone.
Mixed in with periods of
More of the latter than the former, unfortunately. But, well Boris met his demise with his hubris so perhaps imposter syndrome saves lives.
And this is why I moved to using white boards.
I wish I understood how to use them. I have half written scraps of paper and random text in random text files. Notebooks are about the best I can do. I can’t write very well on a vertical board. It is really really uncomfortable and I end up obsessing on how bad it looks over solving the problem. Sometimes drawing on my iPad instead works, but that is another place to look for things.
I do like using Markdown + Mermaid. Obsidian is a nice little note taking app once I got it configured. It just takes me forever.
They have smaller white boards you can just prop up at a nice angle on your desk. These are what I use. Bigger ones that have to hang are for scheduling because I also black hole anything more than a week away. Also the white board is just off loading my thoughts so people can’t interrupt me so badly. I still use note taking apps for tracking completed thoughts or things I have to come back to.
I used to work in an office with 4 other developers. It was a common occurrence to have the lights go off in the room, for energy saving.
Simone would wave their arm, then go back to staring.
I work in a dedicated room in my house (remote developer). During the day I don’t really need to turn the lights on—windows and a skylight. The sun sets and sometimes I really just don’t notice. My wife will come in at some point and scold me for working in the dark, claiming it’s bad for my eyes (as if staring at a screen all day isn’t already).
I actually rather enjoy that rather not-subtle marker of the passage of time and how entrancing “the zone” can be such that I fail to even notice that.
I’ve often been accused of looking angry when I’m thinking about a problem. Of course I’m angry! How dare the solution allude me! 😡
Allude what to you?
Probably alluding to the fact that it’s eluding them 🤷
Maybe “aluding” is because the solution is both eluding and alluring at the same time, so one keeps following its syren song but when you get to where you think the solution is, it’s not there.
Certainly it matches the feeling I got with some of the development problems I’ve faced.
Don’t ask him, he will be angry and mumbling something about “the zone”.
I refer to the process as “loading” and it helps so much when coding, debugging or even playing puzzle games
If I intimidate it by staring at it long enough, it’ll work eventually.
Tbh a good builder/technician will do this too when faced with a complicated fix
Same thing; every action has an opposite reaction, whether it’s code or physical engineering
I’m a carpenter, I do high end stuff for rich people with really expensive pieces of wood. I’ll stare as much as I need to on the issues I have or even before starting anything. Need to think about every way it could go wrong.
How do you prepare for “world ends in nuclear holocaust?” Seems a bit difficult to account for.
Cup of tea
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Sometimes the first, then eventually the second when you realize you did it but forgot you did it.
“Ok fine, I’m going to see who committed this atrocity,
git blame, oh crap.”
Damn, I can’t think about something for more than a minutes or two without getting distracted… Maybe I’m the one who’s broken.
Wait until she walks in on him explaining the problem out loud to a rubber duck.
Look IDK about math, but I know about programming: “stare at it” is bad advice. Give it a minute or two, then get up and go for a walk or go to bed. Let your subconscious stare at it instead; it’s actually better at this stuff than you are.
If I’m ever staring at math, I’m absolutely not processing visual information while doing so. It’s more that like, I’m staring off into space and thinking and “math on a whiteboard” just happens to be the last thing I was looking at and my face is still pointed that way
Sounds like Feynman’s algorithm.
- Write down the problem
- Think about it really hard
- Write down the solution
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Programmers do that a lot? I always just start trying stuff in the command line until it works. It’s in research though, so maybe different from what is typical developer stuff?
