Friday, May 22, 2009
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Software Developers: Part One
Take mental breaks and listen to the perspectives of other developers...
There's a scene in the movie Pi where the character Saul, an old mathematician, describes the story of Archimedes wrestling with the problem of measuring the mass of gifts given to the King to determine if they have real or fake gold in them. Frustrated, his wife tells him to go take a bath and relax. Archimedes takes a bath and solution occurs to him while soaking in the tub. Displacement of water can measure mass. He famously shouts "Eureka!". Saul finishes the story and asks the other character, Max, what the moral of the story is. Max replies: "that a breakthrough will come". Saul replies "Wrong! Listen to your wife, she will give you perspective! You need to take a bath!".
In other words, brute force rarely works well on finding the solution to vexing problems, but taking a break and discussing the problem with other folks, or even discussing something else, can do wonders for the background processes of your brain.
Many programmers here would agree there are diminishing returns to working extremely long hours and killing yourself while trying to be the hero programmer. Sometimes you just need to take a bath :).
| | View blog reactionsThere's a scene in the movie Pi where the character Saul, an old mathematician, describes the story of Archimedes wrestling with the problem of measuring the mass of gifts given to the King to determine if they have real or fake gold in them. Frustrated, his wife tells him to go take a bath and relax. Archimedes takes a bath and solution occurs to him while soaking in the tub. Displacement of water can measure mass. He famously shouts "Eureka!". Saul finishes the story and asks the other character, Max, what the moral of the story is. Max replies: "that a breakthrough will come". Saul replies "Wrong! Listen to your wife, she will give you perspective! You need to take a bath!".
In other words, brute force rarely works well on finding the solution to vexing problems, but taking a break and discussing the problem with other folks, or even discussing something else, can do wonders for the background processes of your brain.
Many programmers here would agree there are diminishing returns to working extremely long hours and killing yourself while trying to be the hero programmer. Sometimes you just need to take a bath :).
