Jan 24, 2009
How to enter the Zone at will
You know what I'm talking about. Programming can be the best of times or the
worst of times. Sometimes the fingers seem clumsy on the keyboard, tool after
tool acts flaky, we scream and curse, we become aware of the huge tower of
complexity we rely on. At other times all thought flies except for this one
thing we're working on right now. The fingers fly, the thoughts hum, and we
eventually exit the trance amazed at what we have accomplished, at how cool it
all is. We call this the Zone, writers and artists call it the Muse, and it
has taken a while to realize that it's just a mental state [1] only loosely
influenced by external factors.
I too have chased after the Zone day after day for many years as I struggle to
bring programming ideas to life. Like conversation, programming can give you
anything but consistency. You never know if this session will be good or bad.
Sometimes things are good from the moment you hit the keyboard. Most times,
though, you struggle for a while before you find it, before you lose yourself.
On most days it takes me 2 hours just to get going, to stop noticing the
mechanical actions between thought and software. Since getting going takes so
long I've gotten used to the idea that programming needs large quanta of time.
I need my time to be divided up into chunks at least 4 hours long. The truly
great sessions require 8 hour sessions, multiple of them broken up only by
sleep without thought to external stimulus or time of day.
Or so I thought until now. A few days ago I noticed that I've gone months
without hacking for 4 hours straight. My output is not reduced, indeed I'm
accomplishing as much as I ever have. These days it seems I can make something
out of even the stray hour that gets thrown my way. What changed?
What changed was that I started doing TDD. I started breaking big ideas down
into lists of stories in a little text file, picking a story, writing test
cases for it. That was it. Somehow, it seemed, just having stories and test
cases served to focus the mind.
Did you ever find yourself thinking, "Man, for all the lengthy reasoning if
I'd just heard about reason x I'd have been on board from the start?" Forget
exercise-is-good-for-you, bruce-lee-beating-up-the-bad-guys, girls-like-it --
if I'd only known it would improve my posture I'd have started doing weights
long ago. Forget politeness, a smooth ride, traffic safety -- if only I'd been
reminded of speed limits and traffic cops and tickets, I'd have slowed right
down.
And I would have been all over TDD if I'd known it would get me to the Zone at
will. Forget all the lengthy rationales about project success rates, the agile
manifesto, dealing with changing requirements, avoiding regressions. When I
think about all those years of nursing my RSI, wondering what I was doing
wrong after a lengthy disappointment, psyching myself up to the level of focus
and discipline necessary for long hours at a stretch, procrastinating to avoid
the grind, when I think about these things, oh man. If only I'd known.
(Inspired by this
thread)
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Jan 24, 2009
“Keep your eyes peeled for the time when you have to personally evolve and
start tackling business problems, or step out of the way and let someone else
do it for you."
—
Tony Wright to technical founders
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Jan 23, 2009
“The more a shopper spends, the greater the interest in personalized ads."
--
ChoiceStream
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Jan 12, 2009
“Peer review was uncommon until the mid 20th century, relying on editorial
judgement instead. Peer review only became widespread because of increased
academic specialization, increased publication volume, and technologies for
copying paper."
—
paraphrasing Michael Nielsen
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Dec 2, 2009
From "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," by Kurt Vonnegut:
I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. The least a government could
do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. There's plenty for everybody in
this country, if we'd only share more.
"And just what do you think that would do to incentive?"
You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not
being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent
education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?
"The what?"
The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it. We can slurp
from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp
more efficiently.
"Slurping lessons?"
From lawyers! From tax consultants! We're born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and
the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts
to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes'
screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.
"It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own."
Sure—provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that
there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit
system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. 'Go where the rich and powerful
are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them
enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips,
warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river
of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your
own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might
hear.'
comments
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Dec 14, 2008
A newbie driver in San Francisco
Open a route in downtown San Francisco and drag
the destination around. Watch how convoluted even simple routes get.
Destinations half a block apart need entirely different routes.
When I moved to San Francisco, getting into my car often triggered Pavlovian
fury for the impending battle with one-ways, no-left-turns,
you-screwed-up-now-go-back-and-try-agains. Now rage has gradually simmered
down into a cautious wariness, an ambient “what are you going to throw at me
now, city?” I know to plan my routes. I know the three places where you can
turn left on Market, and I know not to try turning left on 6th. I am no
longer a newcomer.
Driving in San Francisco is complex because it isn't geared for newcomers.
When habitual users have more pull
than newcomers, dramatic changes become hard. Adjustment would be needed. Old
habits would have to be broken, replaced with new ones. Much easier if you're
a veteran to just apply the duct tape of a new exception. And the exceptions
gradually pile up until you're oblivious to even
the need for a ‘last left off Market’ sign.
My lesson from all this: If you have an audience, listen for signs that
you're ‘inaccessible
to newcomers’—it's keeping you from moving
to a larger audience. ‘Inaccessible to newcomers’ is a sign of complacency,
an opportunity for an upstart to disrupt life as usual for the incumbent.
But there's no opportunity in San Francisco. The last thing a city needs is
more drivers.
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Dec 12, 2008
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Dec 11, 2008
Caroline Baum: Until now, central bankers pretty much cared about asset bubbles only to the extent that asset prices affected their ability to deliver price stability. Otherwise, the operative doctrine was laissez-faire-’til-after-they-burst.
William Whitei: The most calamitous downturns were not preceded by any degree of inflation. There was no inflation in 1873-74, in the 1920s, in the 1980s in Japan and in the 1990s in Southeast Asia.
Edward Harrison: Consumer price inflation and inflation are not the same thing. Inflation comes from increasing the money supply and increased credit.
me: Inflation in an asset affects only those owning it. Consumer price inflation hurts everyone.
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Dec 11, 2008
“Almost exactly 101 years ago,
J P Morgan was the lender of last resort in the
panic of 1907. He,
George Baker, and four others would try and ascertain which companies were hopelessly overextended and should be allowed to fail, and which were essentially healthy and could be saved. Somehow they would find ways to supply liquidity where it would do the most good. They scrutinized the collateral offered by all borrowers. When they could not determine whether
Knickerbocker had enough assets to secure a loan, Morgan decided not to intervene. Finally the
Trust Company of America came up with good collateral- “boxes and stacks full of certificates” - and Morgan
said, “This is the place to stop the trouble.”
That’s what Bernanke and Paulson should be doing—find the boundary line of quality and offer to lend to all those with assets above that line, not below it.
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Dec 11, 2008
“Bailouts are terribly inefficient ways of dealing with companies in distress. Chapter 11 bankruptcies are far better. Chapter 11 could have been used by Lehman Brothers, but Lehman apparently refused to consider it, and chose instead to play a game of “chicken” with the Treasury.
Prior to 1978, a company could seek Chapter 11 protection only if it was insolvent, and Chapter 11 normally meant that a company’s managers would have to relinquish control. In 1978 Congress amended Chapter 11 to delete the insolvency test, and also to allow managers to keep control of a company unless a bankruptcy judge explicitly finds them to be incompetent or untrustworthy.
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