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#2 Work in long stretches. This is wrong or at least worded incorrectly IMHO. I believe the author knew it wasn't quite right when they wrote it, since the se
by alex_young 8y ago
#2 Work in long stretches.
This is wrong or at least worded incorrectly IMHO. I believe the author knew it wasn't quite right when they wrote it, since the second paragraph is an attempt to qualify it away.
The rule would perhaps be better stated as "Think in a distraction free environment".
Plenty of productive programming is done at rest, and long stretches of "work" produce subpar code.
- codingdave 8y agoI do think working in long stretches is effective, but I'm not talking about a single "butt-in-seat" marathon coding session. I think of it more as a focus on solely one project for a number of days, without multi-tasking on 3+ projects at once giving each one only a couple hours per day. The processing that you do when not sitting at a desk, and those eureka moments that come along with it happen more often when you are working one thing at a time. Or, at least they do for me.
- alex_young 8y agoThanks! That seems worthy of its own "Work on one thing at a time" rule to me. Task switching is the bane of agile.
- dasmoth 8y agoYep. The tricky thing is that "help a colleague on some little problem" can end up being an expensive context switch, but can also be pretty valuable. A degree of asynchrony, and perhaps some kind of "office hours" type mechanism to handle questions in batch mode seem like good solutions. But that goes against processes which treat "resolving blockers" as top priority.
- sp332 8y agoThinking is work. "Work in long stretches" includes "think in long stretches."