4 ms·

This has happened to me on the past two consecutive days (and nights). A problem that I couldn't figure out at 11pm, one that I spent at least 30 minutes pouri

by hswolff 16y ago

This has happened to me on the past two consecutive days (and nights). A problem that I couldn't figure out at 11pm, one that I spent at least 30 minutes pouring through Google Groups, searching through APIs, trial and error, etc...After sleeping on it the solution revealed itself to me in the morning in less than five minutes. Truly phenomenal and hugely rewarding.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
My scariest one was dreaming a solution. I woke up about 3am absolutely clear what I'd done wrong, scribbled a note and went back to sleep. Next morning I looked at the note and it was exactly right.
- jonknee 16y ago
  Well that's one way to increase your billable hours.
- markkanof 16y ago
  I've done this and actually find it a bit disturbing. It's great when I can't solve a problem in the evening, get a good nights sleep, and then I am able to quickly solve the problem in the morning. Sometimes though I actually have dreams about sitting at my desk writing the code that I couldn't come up with during the day. On the one hand it's great to wake up in the morning with the solution to my coding problem. But on the other hand, I'm not sure it's healthy to have my dreams filled with the same thing that I do all day while awake. Whenever that happens I definitely make some extra time for my hobbies that don't involve computers.
arethuza 16y ago
The one I remember vividly was a bug in a student project - I was writing a set of tools to "compile" lambda calculus expressions to to various sets of combinators and gather statistics about the effectiveness of different sets of combinators (starting with SK). For some reason any attempt to implement a Y-combinator for recursion was crashing and for a couple of days I had no idea what could be wrong - then sitting on a bus on the way to visit my sister I was looking at a cinema from the bus and the thought came into my head "it's your aggressive re-use of applicative nodes". Sure enough next day I removed this attempt at an optimization and everything worked! I've had a few experiences like that and I now know that if I find a really tricky bug the best strategy isn't to sit there all night looking at it but to go and get a decent nights sleep - there is a very good chance you will know the answer by the next morning.

by hswolff 16y ago

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago

My scariest one was dreaming a solution. I woke up about 3am absolutely clear what I'd done wrong, scribbled a note and went back to sleep. Next morning I looked at the note and it was exactly right.

jonknee 16y ago
Well that's one way to increase your billable hours.
markkanof 16y ago
I've done this and actually find it a bit disturbing. It's great when I can't solve a problem in the evening, get a good nights sleep, and then I am able to quickly solve the problem in the morning. Sometimes though I actually have dreams about sitting at my desk writing the code that I couldn't come up with during the day. On the one hand it's great to wake up in the morning with the solution to my coding problem. But on the other hand, I'm not sure it's healthy to have my dreams filled with the same thing that I do all day while awake. Whenever that happens I definitely make some extra time for my hobbies that don't involve computers.

arethuza 16y ago

The one I remember vividly was a bug in a student project - I was writing a set of tools to "compile" lambda calculus expressions to to various sets of combinators and gather statistics about the effectiveness of different sets of combinators (starting with SK). For some reason any attempt to implement a Y-combinator for recursion was crashing and for a couple of days I had no idea what could be wrong - then sitting on a bus on the way to visit my sister I was looking at a cinema from the bus and the thought came into my head "it's your aggressive re-use of applicative nodes". Sure enough next day I removed this attempt at an optimization and everything worked! I've had a few experiences like that and I now know that if I find a really tricky bug the best strategy isn't to sit there all night looking at it but to go and get a decent nights sleep - there is a very good chance you will know the answer by the next morning.