5 ms·

Yes, the title is rather poor. From reading the post, it seems what he really means is: "Mental Context Switches are Really Expensive". That's far less exciti

by ken 7y ago

Yes, the title is rather poor. From reading the post, it seems what he really means is: "Mental Context Switches are Really Expensive". That's far less exciting, and probably also kind of obvious to most knowledge workers.

nvrspyx 7y ago
I think the title should be "Attention is not multi-threaded", which I believe is pretty well known in psychology and where the expensiveness of context switching stems from.
- no_wizard 7y ago
  I wish more places and people understood this! I am of the opinion that this for instance might be the biggest singular reason nodejs has been successful without people even realizing it. Since “full stack” development is so in demand/popular this really limits the context overhead of switching languages and semantics between front end and back end in such a way that it can keep productivity high. (Yes nodejs has other strengths too and to be fair weaknesses but I wouldn’t discredit this as A much factor off hand at least)
Aloha 7y ago
I have ADD, and I've been using a context switch for years to explain why it's so hard for me to change between two totally different tasks, but I can change pretty rapidly (with no penalty) between multiple similar tasks. I've likened it has having to pack up one set of tools, before I can unpack the other one.
- spiralx 7y ago
  I find that when doing something less interesting I tend to switch back and forth between two tasks quite a lot while working - each switch acts to regain attention before it starts dropping off again. As long as nothing external forces me to context switch this both keeps me focused and drives my boss nuts.
djsumdog 7y ago
Yes, and we're talking about conscious thought with context switching; not necessarily subconscious thought. You can drive or bicycle and actively be thinking about that conversation you had yesterday. Both are complex tasks. The brains of mammals work very differently from the machines we create. We don't understand exactly how, but they are substantially more complex. Just look at how much work goes into writing a machine that can classify photos as cats or dogs; or software that can drive an autonomous vehicle.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Once a certain skill is fully internalized, using it may require no attention at all. It's similar to growing a coprocessor designed to do this task, load on CPU is reduced and you may also get a small cache to buffer it for a while without losing context even if interrupted. It has limitations, too complex tasks are hard for brain to make automatically facile.
- warmfuzzykitten 7y ago
  Or, when you're trying to fall asleep, find yourself simultaneously mentally singing an earworm while thinking about code while trying not to think of some past trauma. It seems an everyday experience to have multiple streams of thought all at the foreground.
xg15 7y ago
> That's far less exciting, and probably also kind of obvious to most knowledge workers. I think his point was that, obvious or not, many knowledge workers organize their work that way and this will actively cause psychological harm. I wasn't fond of his technology metaphors either, but I think the point he wanted to make was a valid one. Though, using the metaphors as a tool of argumentation might also make sense because do use terms like "multitasking" a lot when describing situations where you have to switch around between different activities a lot (and implicitly justifying it because the activity is also seen as simple and basic - because computers do it all the time) So it might be useful to drill down on those metaphors and show how incorrect they actually are. (If you want to nitpick on the metaphors, I think he had threads in computers come off too easily: As probably every kernel developer can tell you, OS context switch absolutely do involve a complicated machinery of instructions - and as every application developer knows, having multiple threads can absolutely lead to chaos if you have no strategy how to manage them)

by ken 7y ago

nvrspyx 7y ago

I think the title should be "Attention is not multi-threaded", which I believe is pretty well known in psychology and where the expensiveness of context switching stems from.

no_wizard 7y ago
I wish more places and people understood this! I am of the opinion that this for instance might be the biggest singular reason nodejs has been successful without people even realizing it. Since “full stack” development is so in demand/popular this really limits the context overhead of switching languages and semantics between front end and back end in such a way that it can keep productivity high. (Yes nodejs has other strengths too and to be fair weaknesses but I wouldn’t discredit this as A much factor off hand at least)

Aloha 7y ago

I have ADD, and I've been using a context switch for years to explain why it's so hard for me to change between two totally different tasks, but I can change pretty rapidly (with no penalty) between multiple similar tasks. I've likened it has having to pack up one set of tools, before I can unpack the other one.

spiralx 7y ago
I find that when doing something less interesting I tend to switch back and forth between two tasks quite a lot while working - each switch acts to regain attention before it starts dropping off again. As long as nothing external forces me to context switch this both keeps me focused and drives my boss nuts.

djsumdog 7y ago

Yes, and we're talking about conscious thought with context switching; not necessarily subconscious thought. You can drive or bicycle and actively be thinking about that conversation you had yesterday. Both are complex tasks. The brains of mammals work very differently from the machines we create. We don't understand exactly how, but they are substantially more complex. Just look at how much work goes into writing a machine that can classify photos as cats or dogs; or software that can drive an autonomous vehicle.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Once a certain skill is fully internalized, using it may require no attention at all. It's similar to growing a coprocessor designed to do this task, load on CPU is reduced and you may also get a small cache to buffer it for a while without losing context even if interrupted. It has limitations, too complex tasks are hard for brain to make automatically facile.
warmfuzzykitten 7y ago
Or, when you're trying to fall asleep, find yourself simultaneously mentally singing an earworm while thinking about code while trying not to think of some past trauma. It seems an everyday experience to have multiple streams of thought all at the foreground.

xg15 7y ago

> That's far less exciting, and probably also kind of obvious to most knowledge workers. I think his point was that, obvious or not, many knowledge workers organize their work that way and this will actively cause psychological harm. I wasn't fond of his technology metaphors either, but I think the point he wanted to make was a valid one. Though, using the metaphors as a tool of argumentation might also make sense because do use terms like "multitasking" a lot when describing situations where you have to switch around between different activities a lot (and implicitly justifying it because the activity is also seen as simple and basic - because computers do it all the time) So it might be useful to drill down on those metaphors and show how incorrect they actually are. (If you want to nitpick on the metaphors, I think he had threads in computers come off too easily: As probably every kernel developer can tell you, OS context switch absolutely do involve a complicated machinery of instructions - and as every application developer knows, having multiple threads can absolutely lead to chaos if you have no strategy how to manage them)