7 ms·

Programmers without computers

83 points by fogus 16y ago

jmuk 16y ago
It also reminds me of programming in Starbucks, where you have no (or weak) network connection. Because of the network connection, you can concentrate on programming (or design, or thinking) rather than time-consuming and attracting information from the net.
edw519 16y ago
Reminds me of an oldie but goodie about getting away from my computer: "How do you achieve laser focus and concentration?" The single most important thing I do to "achieve laser focus and concentration" is to work in such a way that I don't need "laser focus and concentration" to get my work done. This has to be done the night before. I always quit all online work at least 2 hours before bedtime and print whatever I'm working on. Then I go into any other room with program listings, blank paper, and pens (especially red!) and plan out all of tomorrow's work. All analysis, design, and refactoring must be done at this time. I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. I also do not allow myself to get back onto the computer. The idea is to have a clear "vision" of what I am going to accomplish the next day. The clearer the better. This does 2 things. First, I think about it all night (maybe even dream about it). Second, I can't wait to get started the next day. I always wake up and start programming immediately. Once I get going, it's easy to keep going. Any difficulties are probably because I didn't plan well enough the night before. Not sure if that's the answer you're looking for, but whatever gets the work done... Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191199 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191199
- dfox 16y ago
  I used to do large amounts of programming on paper while commuting or waiting somewhere, but in retrospect I threw most results of that away and did in completely different manner when I got to computer. (for example, I wrote most of the macros in dfsch's standard library into my notebook in interpreted code, only to rewrite them in C when I started to actually implement that). But even in that case, programming without computer caused actual boost of my productivity. Unfortunately now I don't have much opportunity to do that and you inspire me to try to somehow make time for that again.
  - mcantor 16y ago
    Even if you threw the notes away, creating them in the first place primed your brain and helped you understand the problem domain more thoroughly.
- hollerith 16y ago
  >I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. . . . I always wake up and start programming immediately. Are you most alert or most sharp in the evening? (My question goes to the hypothesis that planning should be done when alertness or mental effectiveness is high.)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- cmelbye 16y ago
  I love doing this. I often quit for the day and then pull out a notebook and fill up a page with ideas for new features, solving a problem, etc. I normally can't think of ideas like that while I'm in TextMate and I'm thinking of how to translate ideas into Ruby code and not about the big picture. Sometimes the ideas I jot down are worthless because they wouldn't actually be practical if they were implemented, but usually it's very helpful. And you're right in that it gets me excited to program the next morning because I can try to turn some of those ideas into something real.
- zyfo 16y ago
  Do you still manage to do this consistently?
  - edw519 16y ago
    Yes, about 75% of the time. I still struggle with night time discipline. After doing this for years, when I do this the night before, the next day is always easier. When I don't do it the night before, I almost always struggle and waste time. The trick is simply to budget the time and make sure you review something the night before. If you wait until morning to think about the problem, you probably won't dream about the solution the night before.
- clistctrl 16y ago
  Brilliant. There's a few problems unique to my own situation, but I like where this is going.
jarin 16y ago
This is completely terrible, but one of the reasons I've found it so difficult to quit smoking is that the nicotine urge acts as a timer to go outside to clear my head and get some fresh air (ironic, I know). I've been freelancing for a couple of years now, but about half of the programmers were smokers at my last job. We would coordinate smoke breaks throughout the day, and that time was often spent chatting about whatever projects we were working on. It turned out that it was a good way to get feedback and throw ideas off the wall without interrupting people at their desks.
- mark_story 16y ago
  For non smokers, you can always try drinking large volumes of water, the frequent bathroom & refill breaks can help replace smoke break time.
- timrobinson 16y ago
  Did you throw ideas off the wall with the non-smokers too?
  - jarin 16y ago
    As often as possible (usually at lunch, happy hour, or while playing Street Fighter II), but we would try to avoid disturbing people at their desks unless it was urgent. Of course, there were some people who never came out to lunch or happy hour, and they probably did end up being out of the loop a little. It kind of reminds me of what someone told me once: "If you don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, you're probably a pretty boring person."
- wazoox 16y ago
  As long as I had smokers in my team, I used to go outside with them with a coffee. I had the fresh air without any harm to my lungs :)
  - jarin 16y ago
    I used to do that when I was in the Navy (I didn't smoke at the time). I was working nights in the server room on an aircraft carrier and didn't get to see the sun much. It wasn't exactly encouraged to take random breaks all the time for no reason, and you can't go up on the flight deck during flight ops, so at the end of each shift I would go out to the smoke deck with my friends to look at the water and get some sunlight.
mduerksen 16y ago
I'm a great fan of pen and paper "programming". Each time I do this, I am amazed once more how powerful thoughts and observations can emerge by turning away from my laptop and rethinking the problem with most basic drawings and without the shakles of my IDE and other tools. This is espescially important for problem solving and creativity, where your first reflex is almost never the best, or when you got stuck. Paper gives you the freedom needed to express the problem your wrestling with, and as my old math teacher rightly said: Expressing the problem is halfway to the solution.
jwcacces 16y ago
Seems like they're programmers without websites also...
melissamiranda 16y ago
Massages and yoga classes work wonders to clear my head and solve design problems I'm stuck on. It's impossible to see the problem from a new angle by continuing to stare at the same screen for hours. Maybe Google and Facebook got it right with those walkabout masseuses.
signa11 16y ago
i have heard this from my father who was at iit-k, circa 1970's: ibm having installed their machine in the cs-lab on campus, wanted to paint an entire wall in the lab with just a single word "THINK" ! it kind of amused me when i heard it at first. the real truth about it hit home when i started debugging my first program ever (a taylor series 'sin(x)' calculation).
bane 16y ago
I was even more puzzled when the network went down, which it often did. Half of us worked on Windows PCs and half worked on Unix workstations. When the network was down, the PC folks kept working because they had self-contained local work environments. Never underestimate the power of a self-contained work environment. Being able to focus your entire development process to a single machine can be extremely powerful in certain contexts.
- xiongchiamiov 16y ago
  Similar arguments go for using a distributed VCS.
gamble 16y ago
Managers (and many programmers) tend to believe on a gut level that programmers are only truly productive when there are fingers on the keyboard. Unfortunately, in most organizations you don't want to be 'that guy' who spends half his time scribbling notes, reading inscrutable documents, and frequently talking with peers. It's hard for a casual observer to tell whether you're productive, and many people will assume you're not.
m0nastic 16y ago
I immediately thought of this blog post by Nate Lawson: http://rdist.root.org/2008/07/03/dead-listing-while-on-vacation/ http://rdist.root.org/2008/07/03/dead-listing-while-on-vacat... Wherein he describes the process by which he prints out dis-assembly of a program and goes through it by hand while at the beach.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
I'm reminded of Bill Watterson's description of how he would come up with Calvin & Hobbes strips: > People always ask how cartoonists come up with ideas, and the answer is so boring that we’re usually tempted to make up something sarcastic. The truth is, we hold a blank sheet of paper, stare into space, and let our minds wander. (To the layman, this looks remarkably like goofing off.) When something interests us, we play around with it. Sometimes this yields a funny observation; sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s about all there is to it. Once in a while the cartoonist will find himself in a beam of light and angels will appear with a great idea, but not often.

83 points by fogus 16y ago

jmuk 16y ago

It also reminds me of programming in Starbucks, where you have no (or weak) network connection. Because of the network connection, you can concentrate on programming (or design, or thinking) rather than time-consuming and attracting information from the net.

edw519 16y ago

Reminds me of an oldie but goodie about getting away from my computer: "How do you achieve laser focus and concentration?" The single most important thing I do to "achieve laser focus and concentration" is to work in such a way that I don't need "laser focus and concentration" to get my work done. This has to be done the night before. I always quit all online work at least 2 hours before bedtime and print whatever I'm working on. Then I go into any other room with program listings, blank paper, and pens (especially red!) and plan out all of tomorrow's work. All analysis, design, and refactoring must be done at this time. I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. I also do not allow myself to get back onto the computer. The idea is to have a clear "vision" of what I am going to accomplish the next day. The clearer the better. This does 2 things. First, I think about it all night (maybe even dream about it). Second, I can't wait to get started the next day. I always wake up and start programming immediately. Once I get going, it's easy to keep going. Any difficulties are probably because I didn't plan well enough the night before. Not sure if that's the answer you're looking for, but whatever gets the work done... Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191199 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191199

dfox 16y ago
I used to do large amounts of programming on paper while commuting or waiting somewhere, but in retrospect I threw most results of that away and did in completely different manner when I got to computer. (for example, I wrote most of the macros in dfsch's standard library into my notebook in interpreted code, only to rewrite them in C when I started to actually implement that). But even in that case, programming without computer caused actual boost of my productivity. Unfortunately now I don't have much opportunity to do that and you inspire me to try to somehow make time for that again.
- mcantor 16y ago
  Even if you threw the notes away, creating them in the first place primed your brain and helped you understand the problem domain more thoroughly.
hollerith 16y ago
>I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. . . . I always wake up and start programming immediately. Are you most alert or most sharp in the evening? (My question goes to the hypothesis that planning should be done when alertness or mental effectiveness is high.)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cmelbye 16y ago
I love doing this. I often quit for the day and then pull out a notebook and fill up a page with ideas for new features, solving a problem, etc. I normally can't think of ideas like that while I'm in TextMate and I'm thinking of how to translate ideas into Ruby code and not about the big picture. Sometimes the ideas I jot down are worthless because they wouldn't actually be practical if they were implemented, but usually it's very helpful. And you're right in that it gets me excited to program the next morning because I can try to turn some of those ideas into something real.
zyfo 16y ago
Do you still manage to do this consistently?
- edw519 16y ago
  Yes, about 75% of the time. I still struggle with night time discipline. After doing this for years, when I do this the night before, the next day is always easier. When I don't do it the night before, I almost always struggle and waste time. The trick is simply to budget the time and make sure you review something the night before. If you wait until morning to think about the problem, you probably won't dream about the solution the night before.
clistctrl 16y ago
Brilliant. There's a few problems unique to my own situation, but I like where this is going.

jarin 16y ago

This is completely terrible, but one of the reasons I've found it so difficult to quit smoking is that the nicotine urge acts as a timer to go outside to clear my head and get some fresh air (ironic, I know). I've been freelancing for a couple of years now, but about half of the programmers were smokers at my last job. We would coordinate smoke breaks throughout the day, and that time was often spent chatting about whatever projects we were working on. It turned out that it was a good way to get feedback and throw ideas off the wall without interrupting people at their desks.

mark_story 16y ago
For non smokers, you can always try drinking large volumes of water, the frequent bathroom & refill breaks can help replace smoke break time.
timrobinson 16y ago
Did you throw ideas off the wall with the non-smokers too?
- jarin 16y ago
  As often as possible (usually at lunch, happy hour, or while playing Street Fighter II), but we would try to avoid disturbing people at their desks unless it was urgent. Of course, there were some people who never came out to lunch or happy hour, and they probably did end up being out of the loop a little. It kind of reminds me of what someone told me once: "If you don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, you're probably a pretty boring person."
wazoox 16y ago
As long as I had smokers in my team, I used to go outside with them with a coffee. I had the fresh air without any harm to my lungs :)
- jarin 16y ago
  I used to do that when I was in the Navy (I didn't smoke at the time). I was working nights in the server room on an aircraft carrier and didn't get to see the sun much. It wasn't exactly encouraged to take random breaks all the time for no reason, and you can't go up on the flight deck during flight ops, so at the end of each shift I would go out to the smoke deck with my friends to look at the water and get some sunlight.

mduerksen 16y ago

I'm a great fan of pen and paper "programming". Each time I do this, I am amazed once more how powerful thoughts and observations can emerge by turning away from my laptop and rethinking the problem with most basic drawings and without the shakles of my IDE and other tools. This is espescially important for problem solving and creativity, where your first reflex is almost never the best, or when you got stuck. Paper gives you the freedom needed to express the problem your wrestling with, and as my old math teacher rightly said: Expressing the problem is halfway to the solution.

jwcacces 16y ago

Seems like they're programmers without websites also...

melissamiranda 16y ago

Massages and yoga classes work wonders to clear my head and solve design problems I'm stuck on. It's impossible to see the problem from a new angle by continuing to stare at the same screen for hours. Maybe Google and Facebook got it right with those walkabout masseuses.

signa11 16y ago

i have heard this from my father who was at iit-k, circa 1970's: ibm having installed their machine in the cs-lab on campus, wanted to paint an entire wall in the lab with just a single word "THINK" ! it kind of amused me when i heard it at first. the real truth about it hit home when i started debugging my first program ever (a taylor series 'sin(x)' calculation).

bane 16y ago

I was even more puzzled when the network went down, which it often did. Half of us worked on Windows PCs and half worked on Unix workstations. When the network was down, the PC folks kept working because they had self-contained local work environments. Never underestimate the power of a self-contained work environment. Being able to focus your entire development process to a single machine can be extremely powerful in certain contexts.

xiongchiamiov 16y ago
Similar arguments go for using a distributed VCS.

gamble 16y ago

Managers (and many programmers) tend to believe on a gut level that programmers are only truly productive when there are fingers on the keyboard. Unfortunately, in most organizations you don't want to be 'that guy' who spends half his time scribbling notes, reading inscrutable documents, and frequently talking with peers. It's hard for a casual observer to tell whether you're productive, and many people will assume you're not.

m0nastic 16y ago

I immediately thought of this blog post by Nate Lawson: http://rdist.root.org/2008/07/03/dead-listing-while-on-vacation/ http://rdist.root.org/2008/07/03/dead-listing-while-on-vacat... Wherein he describes the process by which he prints out dis-assembly of a program and goes through it by hand while at the beach.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

I'm reminded of Bill Watterson's description of how he would come up with Calvin & Hobbes strips: > People always ask how cartoonists come up with ideas, and the answer is so boring that we’re usually tempted to make up something sarcastic. The truth is, we hold a blank sheet of paper, stare into space, and let our minds wander. (To the layman, this looks remarkably like goofing off.) When something interests us, we play around with it. Sometimes this yields a funny observation; sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s about all there is to it. Once in a while the cartoonist will find himself in a beam of light and angels will appear with a great idea, but not often.