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The real “must have” tools for programming
- hintymad 3y agoVery true. I've seen too many engineers lose focus easily due to poor sleep. What's even worse is that many of my fellow engineers lost curiosity over time. They thought it was due to age or burden from raising a family, but it's really about managing energy. Intense curiosity requires intensive mental energy, which one can't get from drinking coffee all day.
- baerrie 3y ago+1 to stopping the coffee.
- jemmyw 3y agoI enjoy a couple of cups of coffee a day for its own sake. My understanding is that you normalize to the caffeine so if you enjoy coffee just drink roughly the same amount every day. Giving it up is unlikely to change your sleep much unless you're consuming a silly amount (which some people do). And, as I mentioned to my wife earlier this week, if I feel stressed or something has upset me then just the motions of making coffee or tea is relaxing.
- baerrie 3y agoYeah i still drink it on weekends. I found it made me generally more anxious even with the tolerance, in fact it almost seemed to have a cumulative effect over the years for me. I have shifted to tea and once your palate adjusts, there’s a ton of intrigue especially in Chinese and Taiwanese teas. The caffeine amount in tea doesn’t bother me nearly as much either
- vipermark7 3y agoI hear there's chemicals in tea which balance out the caffeine, and make it less of a shock to the system. My go-to (heh) is Earl Grey, though I usually drink coffee
- contingencies 3y agoRecently discovered cardamom tea, which consists of loose leaf western-style tea infused with cardamom oil. You can buy it from Iranian supermarkets. Great stuff. Also like and recommend both ginger tea and lemongrass tea.
- jrootabega 3y agoIt's good to have some herbal teas that you like for when you really just want a hot cup of something to sip and think.
- lhh 3y agoDon't underestimate the benefit of exercise on mental performance. Your brain is a physical thing after all, mitochondria and all, and exercise improves its ability to function. Plus you'll feel way better, and probably live better for longer.
- luuuzeta 3y ago>During sleep, your brain restructures and reorganises information, creating links between unrelated ideas. This leads to new, creative ideas that you use in your day to day to solve problems and write better software. This reminds of the character Ko Murakami in the manga World Trigger, who can master anything after trying it once and then sleeping on it. Great read if you like manga around strategies and battles.
- michaelsalim 3y agoWas pleasantly surprised with the list. Agree with all of them. The last point about notebooks has especially been useful for me the past few year. There's just something different about using it to help you think. Most of the time, I don't finish fleshing out an idea on paper. But the act of writing (or drawing) it somehow helps me explore new concepts faster. After that I just continue coding or whatever the next steps is. It's also useful when I want to sort or categorize different ideas/thoughts into sections. I'd like to add that it's really nice to have a notebook always in front of you. Mine is always open & ready to be used. It sits right in the middle of my split keyboard so it's literally always in front of me.
- jemmyw 3y agoSome people need a notebook. I don't. I've never found extra productivity from jotting things down like that. And over the years people have actually made me feel bad about that "you don't write things down? you should, it helps organise your mind" whatever. Put a pen in my hand and a doodle comes out. I have a good memory and I can usually visualize problems, and when I cannot then I use computer based drawing tools to figure it out. I've no idea why some people feel the need to almost bully over this, but I've actually pretended to note things down on paper in meetings before to avoid scrutiny. What I'm saying is: a notebook and pen is not an essential must have tool for programming. If you use them then all power to you, but if you don't then do not feel like you're doing things incorrectly, and don't listen to people telling you otherwise.
- reidjs 3y agoDo you have digital notes of some kind? Even just a massive “notes.txt” file? Curious because there’s just so much stuff out there. If I don’t write it down somewhere searchable I’m doomed to repeat the mistake in the future. But I have crappy memory for this kind of stuff.
- anta40 3y agoThat's why Google Keep, Evernote etc were build.
- hot_gril 3y agoThere's another point of social life in relation to work: When you write software, you're working with people, not computers. You have human end users or other humans writing software that interfaces with yours. No matter where in the stack you are, understanding people makes you a better programmer or engineer.
- m463 3y agoI liked the (audio) book Spark - turns out aerobic exercise is really good for you.
- NoPicklez 3y agoDid anyone ever think it wasn't?
- sambapa 3y agoI would add "proper diet" to this list. You still feel like shit even if you do everything from this list but eat only doritos and drink litres of mountain dew. Sleep-diet-exercise is the holy trinity of health and maintaining good baseline of mental performance.
- pjmlp 3y agoQuite a good list, I was expecting something else, again one of those tired UNIX blog posts where only UNIX counts as development environment, instead I got something more rich out of it.
- SoraNoTenshi 3y agoWriting stuff (usually visually) down with a Pen + Paper, also helps me a lot, especially when i try to understand a problem i have. And afterwards i try to explain the problem to myself.