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I feel in turn that this comment is the dismissive one, and in fact extremely so. The issue is not that programmers need to focus, is that they need to focus o

I feel in turn that this comment is the dismissive one, and in fact extremely so. The issue is not that programmers need to focus, is that they need to focus on deep, complex work. At least a few of those other tasks you mention (don’t have much experience with sales copy, and in rather terrible with both sales and copy) do require focus but have smaller reasonable increments of progress. Stop thinking about the workplace for a moment and think more broadly of tasks throughout the entire day. Some of those are more easily put down and returned to than others. Some examples of tasks which require focus but interrupt well: formatting meeting notes into minutes, simple accounting (paying bills, reconciling a ledger). The main point with these are that the individual units of work are small, and don’t generally require a lot of mental preloading to begin/resume working on. So if I am interrupted it can be irritating but I don’t really lose much. Programming generally involves a lot of mental state that needs to be preloaded, and the Subtask units are often not small. That’s all. Regarding the insinuation that this “myth” is the result of coddling at the professional level: if this were true, then non-professionals would not discover this independently for themselves…

rtpg 4y ago
As someone who's had to come up with product copy and have had to fix bugs, people trying to interrupt me writing a long e-mail gets me way more than people interrupting me while trying to fix a bug where I already "know" the issue and I'm just doing the cleanup/test writing. I am being too glib. But the sort of "focus broken, can't move forward" feeling is something I constantly have felt in many non-programming tasks. Granted this blocking is also due to the nebulous nature of those tasks vs, say, fixing a bug. Most bugs (not all!) at least have some sort of definitiveness to them. The coddling I talk about is stuff like other staff members being told to "not bother the coders", something I've seen first and second hand. That, along with many programmer's (myself included) habit of generating endless excuses for why something is not happening and it being more or less accepted as a given. But as someone who struggles with this stuff, I also know that a large percentage of it is due to my own behavior! And changing that has improved things. My post is combatative, but mainly because I really want people who read this stuff to introspect on their own behavior, and _improve_, instead of assuming that the task is impossible due to some intrinsicc nature of the work that is overestimated
- mtrower 4y ago
  Okay, this is fair.
barbariangrunge 4y ago
I write and program. Writing is harder and takes longer to get back into
- mtrower 4y ago
  Are you sure this isn’t because you have more talent/competence for programming than writing? Or that you haven’t set the bars differently? Writing is a daunting task for me, but that has more to do with my own talents and experience than anything. Not implying anything about yours, just something to consider.
kingboss 4y ago
Most programmers are just code plumbers. It's not like most of you are some research scientists breaking into the unknown. In fact for most jobs I've held programming has been by far the easiest part of the job. Understanding the 'real' requirements from the client (not what they think they want but what they actually want) and many other things are on a completely different level of complexity. Computers are the most basic parts of a business. I've also noticed that most software people are horrible at understanding the business that they are operating in. And think that management is the one that doesn't understand things. Except it's the other way around. Engineers are optimizing the parts that don't need optimizing and don't focus on bringing value to the business.
- mtrower 4y ago
  And then we wonder why our software can’t run acceptably on multi ghz processors.

rtpg 4y ago

As someone who's had to come up with product copy and have had to fix bugs, people trying to interrupt me writing a long e-mail gets me way more than people interrupting me while trying to fix a bug where I already "know" the issue and I'm just doing the cleanup/test writing. I am being too glib. But the sort of "focus broken, can't move forward" feeling is something I constantly have felt in many non-programming tasks. Granted this blocking is also due to the nebulous nature of those tasks vs, say, fixing a bug. Most bugs (not all!) at least have some sort of definitiveness to them. The coddling I talk about is stuff like other staff members being told to "not bother the coders", something I've seen first and second hand. That, along with many programmer's (myself included) habit of generating endless excuses for why something is not happening and it being more or less accepted as a given. But as someone who struggles with this stuff, I also know that a large percentage of it is due to my own behavior! And changing that has improved things. My post is combatative, but mainly because I really want people who read this stuff to introspect on their own behavior, and _improve_, instead of assuming that the task is impossible due to some intrinsicc nature of the work that is overestimated

mtrower 4y ago
Okay, this is fair.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

I write and program. Writing is harder and takes longer to get back into

mtrower 4y ago
Are you sure this isn’t because you have more talent/competence for programming than writing? Or that you haven’t set the bars differently? Writing is a daunting task for me, but that has more to do with my own talents and experience than anything. Not implying anything about yours, just something to consider.

kingboss 4y ago

Most programmers are just code plumbers. It's not like most of you are some research scientists breaking into the unknown. In fact for most jobs I've held programming has been by far the easiest part of the job. Understanding the 'real' requirements from the client (not what they think they want but what they actually want) and many other things are on a completely different level of complexity. Computers are the most basic parts of a business. I've also noticed that most software people are horrible at understanding the business that they are operating in. And think that management is the one that doesn't understand things. Except it's the other way around. Engineers are optimizing the parts that don't need optimizing and don't focus on bringing value to the business.

mtrower 4y ago
And then we wonder why our software can’t run acceptably on multi ghz processors.