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> procrastination ... laziness I can only speak for my own procrastination, but it is certainly not rooted in anything I would identify as laziness. It’s roote

> procrastination ... laziness I can only speak for my own procrastination, but it is certainly not rooted in anything I would identify as laziness. It’s rooted in my experience of ADHD, and the corresponding anxiety it produces. How can I be so sure? Because I will often go to great effort to avoid minimal-effort tasks. Or I’ll continue an effort that I sense is likely a sunk cost to abandon in favor of a better solution, because I’m determined to see the first effort through. Interestingly (to me), these were major influences on me becoming a programmer. I’m self taught, I didn’t learn to start a career. I thought I would probably work crappy retail jobs and be broke for the rest of my life. I learned to program because there were tasks I would prefer not to do, so I learned how to automate them out of my purview. Work avoidance, it turns out, is a hallmark of the craft. Why put off for tomorrow what can be put off entirely? Is that laziness? A younger me joked that it is along the lines of: I'm a lazy programmer; the good kind of lazy. I no longer see it that way. I see it as one lens among many into my state of mind which ultimately gives me both drive and difficulty—that makes me incredibly effective and also prone to forgetting to do simple chores for weeks at a time. Edit: that said, I wasn’t motivated to get around the paywall, so I have no idea if the article discusses similar concepts making my reply potentially redundant.

IncRnd 5y ago
> I learned to program because there were tasks I would prefer not to do, so I learned how to automate them out of my purview. Work avoidance, it turns out, is a hallmark of the craft. Why put off for tomorrow what can be put off entirely? > Is that laziness? > Edit: that said, I wasn’t motivated to get around the paywall, so I have no idea if the article discusses similar concepts making my reply potentially redundant. Laziness is the quality of not being willing to work or use any effort [1] Lazy: averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent. [2] According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris [3] [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/laziness https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/lazin... [2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/laziness https://www.dictionary.com/browse/laziness [3] http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  I think my younger self’s quip was indirectly a reference to Wall’s list of virtues. That said, it’s ambiguous (to me) whether working to avoid work satisfies the first cited definition. It’s simultaneously lazy and non-lazy. Of course that dichotomy is applied frequently in programming. It could easily be described as “redefining the problem”. But in my early programming experience it was trading time dedicated to education and hacking in exchange for avoiding manual effort. I learned to programmatically access MP3 metadata so I could update my blog when I posted new songs I recorded, rather than typing out the information directly. That’s literally why I became a programmer, because I got tired of typing some stuff twice (as I had already typed it in iTunes when converting to MP3). That certainly feels more like what I colloquially understand laziness to mean, than the cleverer reinterpretation used by Wall to describe what I understand as work substitution in programming as a non-novice.
  - ptr 5y ago
    It takes willpower to do something different and raise above the “operational”/“manual typing” level; I can’t see how that’s laziness. Long-term thinking isn’t associated with “laziness” either afaik. Fixing problems through programming is all about thinking, not typing. If you try to fix something merely by typing, you’re avoiding the main work we’re supposed to do. Otherwise, why even have computers?
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      This is 99% my point, the only difference I was trying to introduce was that in my initial foray into programming I wasn’t actually a programmer. I didn’t have those insights. I was actually just learning how to make machines let me type less. I had no idea what that impulse would open up for me.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  > Laziness is the quality of not being willing to work or use any effort That’s a description but for all the explanatory power it has, it may as well say “laziness is when you don’t have God with you”. “I’m not going to pay you tomorrow” “Then I’m unwillingly to work” “Being unwilling to work is laziness”. Or “Why can’t you get moving on that project?” “I don’t know” “Then you must be Godless. Next!” Calling someone lazy is a lazy dismissive non-explanation.

IncRnd 5y ago

> I learned to program because there were tasks I would prefer not to do, so I learned how to automate them out of my purview. Work avoidance, it turns out, is a hallmark of the craft. Why put off for tomorrow what can be put off entirely? > Is that laziness? > Edit: that said, I wasn’t motivated to get around the paywall, so I have no idea if the article discusses similar concepts making my reply potentially redundant. Laziness is the quality of not being willing to work or use any effort [1] Lazy: averse or disinclined to work, activity, or exertion; indolent. [2] According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris [3] [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/laziness https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/lazin... [2] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/laziness https://www.dictionary.com/browse/laziness [3] http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/

eyelidlessness 5y ago
I think my younger self’s quip was indirectly a reference to Wall’s list of virtues. That said, it’s ambiguous (to me) whether working to avoid work satisfies the first cited definition. It’s simultaneously lazy and non-lazy. Of course that dichotomy is applied frequently in programming. It could easily be described as “redefining the problem”. But in my early programming experience it was trading time dedicated to education and hacking in exchange for avoiding manual effort. I learned to programmatically access MP3 metadata so I could update my blog when I posted new songs I recorded, rather than typing out the information directly. That’s literally why I became a programmer, because I got tired of typing some stuff twice (as I had already typed it in iTunes when converting to MP3). That certainly feels more like what I colloquially understand laziness to mean, than the cleverer reinterpretation used by Wall to describe what I understand as work substitution in programming as a non-novice.
- ptr 5y ago
  It takes willpower to do something different and raise above the “operational”/“manual typing” level; I can’t see how that’s laziness. Long-term thinking isn’t associated with “laziness” either afaik. Fixing problems through programming is all about thinking, not typing. If you try to fix something merely by typing, you’re avoiding the main work we’re supposed to do. Otherwise, why even have computers?
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    This is 99% my point, the only difference I was trying to introduce was that in my initial foray into programming I wasn’t actually a programmer. I didn’t have those insights. I was actually just learning how to make machines let me type less. I had no idea what that impulse would open up for me.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> Laziness is the quality of not being willing to work or use any effort That’s a description but for all the explanatory power it has, it may as well say “laziness is when you don’t have God with you”. “I’m not going to pay you tomorrow” “Then I’m unwillingly to work” “Being unwilling to work is laziness”. Or “Why can’t you get moving on that project?” “I don’t know” “Then you must be Godless. Next!” Calling someone lazy is a lazy dismissive non-explanation.