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I have always wondered this myself. I find it more difficult to stay focused on a project that is not well defined, but for ones that are well defined and give

I have always wondered this myself. I find it more difficult to stay focused on a project that is not well defined, but for ones that are well defined and give a clear picture of the expected end result I can get into the flow for hours as I run off the checklist of things that are expected. I think that ambiguity kills programming production, and in this industry there are copious amounts of horror stories about poorly defined projects. And I don't think that documentation is some sort of mindless work break either, as someone above eluded to. Being able to effectively explain your code from a technical and/or functional standpoint also takes focus and energy.

lostcolony 12y ago
Very much this. I think 'agile' has been abused a lot by product manager-y types (anyone filling the role) to try and excuse nebulous, ambiguous tasks as being okay to work on ("do your best, that's what we're paying you for; figure out what it should do"). They're okay to have ("we're not sure how that's going to work yet"), but they're not okay to start working on until you nail it down, and nailing it down can be as hard or harder than the actual implementation. Also, as clarification, documentation can indeed be mindless. "This REST API has changed and needs up to date documentation; let me go look at the code and find the new endpoints and write them down and what arguments they take" is a completely menial task.