3 ms·

This fits mwith my experience. When my tasks are defined and are left only to implement I can plow through a lot of work. If I have to develop (or much worse,

This fits mwith my experience. When my tasks are defined and are left only to implement I can plow through a lot of work. If I have to develop (or much worse, alter) abstractions that make use of generics and OOP I do not feel productive at all. I get very confused, easily. (Though I often power through it just fine) I do not smoke during business hours while working on client systems however, that does not sound appealing at all. I have used cannabis extensively on personal projects for inspiration and to make easy but mundane programming tasks interesting for motivation. Refctoring is very boring sometimes, and getting high can keep you focused on how nice it will be to complete it and get to the end result. I often am able to uncover a bit of fun in the refactoring process after smoking. My personal projects benefit from a pattern of: program for an hour or two (completely engrossed), short video game battle or two, smoke up a bit, program...repeat. I can chew through a tremendous amount of work in a five hours (measured by git commits and the complexity within those commits) that would easily take me weeks in a corporate setting. The pattern or rythum triggers "flow" consistently.

ineptech 5y ago
This is interesting, I wish it were that easy for me. Do you do any prep work, i.e. "story planning" (presumably in a less formal way than you would at work)? I find that, for my side projects, I can do a lot of damage while high IFF I have a very clear idea of exactly how the feature should work; but if sober me hasn't worked out clear acceptance criteria for the thing I'm doing, either I daydream and don't actually get anything done, or I wind up doing something totally unrelated, like an opportunistic refactor of something irrelevant to what I sat down to work on.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  It's hard to describe my design and planning approach. I have tried to enforce a structure like we do at work...epics...stories etc. Ends up slowing me down and wasting a bunch of time. I know the domain very well, so it's like the SME or product owner who is also an experienced developer just cranking shit out. I work with a visual designer for the UI which lets me play around with different concepts very quickly. I just iterate very quickly in code and in the UI, expressing myself...it's more art than science. I may plan to do something, and then sit down and get interested in a totally different feature...it is very important to do the thing that thrills me in the moment. It increases quality and ideation momentum.

ineptech 5y ago

This is interesting, I wish it were that easy for me. Do you do any prep work, i.e. "story planning" (presumably in a less formal way than you would at work)? I find that, for my side projects, I can do a lot of damage while high IFF I have a very clear idea of exactly how the feature should work; but if sober me hasn't worked out clear acceptance criteria for the thing I'm doing, either I daydream and don't actually get anything done, or I wind up doing something totally unrelated, like an opportunistic refactor of something irrelevant to what I sat down to work on.

datavirtue 5y ago
It's hard to describe my design and planning approach. I have tried to enforce a structure like we do at work...epics...stories etc. Ends up slowing me down and wasting a bunch of time. I know the domain very well, so it's like the SME or product owner who is also an experienced developer just cranking shit out. I work with a visual designer for the UI which lets me play around with different concepts very quickly. I just iterate very quickly in code and in the UI, expressing myself...it's more art than science. I may plan to do something, and then sit down and get interested in a totally different feature...it is very important to do the thing that thrills me in the moment. It increases quality and ideation momentum.