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Monks copying texts would be a lot more interruptible than the kind of creative intellectual work that programmers do.
by markrages 6y ago
Monks copying texts would be a lot more interruptible than the kind of creative intellectual work that programmers do.
- judofyr 6y agoWhat makes programmers so special? Don't we have ton of grunt work as well? Don't most of us also work on rather trivial CRUD applications? And what work is actually interruptible? Is a sales rep. preparing for a meeting interruptible? Is a project manager planning the next quarter interruptible? I agree that context switching and interruption has a high cost, but isn't the cost pretty much the same regardless of your job?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoNo I don't think so; a monk copying work is different from a developer creating original work. I'll admit that trivial CRUD applications are boring, but with that kind of application it's about understanding and shaping the domain. Naming things, if you will. (disclaimer: I'm working on a CRUD app as we speak, thousands of fields in dozens of modules).
- bosie 6y agoso the question was what makes software developers different? also, what does original work mean? If you mean in the sense of PhD level research, I haven't worked in a lot of places where 'original work' was done. it is mostly glueing together other people's work (which is original to the person doing the glueing maybe).
- nefitty 6y agoA developer has to hold a cogent mental model of the problem they’re working on. Someone copying text might be able to do it while thinking of other things. If a developer is interrupted, their mental model “pops” like a bubble, and they might have to mentally start from scratch once they’ve dealt with the interruption.