Subj : Re: Constant interruptions and left brain - right brain thing
To   : comp.programming
From : Anon
Date : Thu Sep 29 2005 12:30 am

"Simo Melenius" <firstname.lastname@iki.fi-spam> wrote in message 
news:8764slt0ss.fsf@sme.intra.citec.fi...
> Same here, and it causes no less than two different problems. When
> interrupted, first you start losing your mental flow on the computer
> problem as you're interrupted. Second, while that happens you're
> nevertheless partially still "in it".
>
> That means you probably don't understand -- or you just stare into a
> distance and plain ignore -- what the other guy was saying to you.
> Then you respond "Mmm-ummm, yeah, hmmm-hm" to get rid of him and end
> up both not knowing what was he actually trying to tell you AND losing
> your focus on the programming issue.

Yes, I can easily switch my mind to focussing on what the person is saying, 
but there's always a reluctance to do that because as soon as I pay any kind 
of attention whatsoever I'm out of "it" and it takes me a long time to get 
back in "it".

> One of the best habits I have is deliberately broken source code. If
> the source doesn't compile/evaluate (and possibly has some key ideas
> or future sketches written in it in English, pseudocode, or the
> original language) the situation looks fairly promising the following
> day.

Interesting idea that I've never tried. What I do mostly is set a bookmark 
on the line I'm on (all the development IDEs I use support this), add a 
quick "// TODO: Finish!" and if necessary enter a few lines of text into a 
quick notepad window. It helps anyway. I probably don't do this enough as 
sometimes something seems like a 2 minute disruption and I think I can 
probably remember what I was doing for another 10 minutes or so, but while 
dealing with the 2 minute disruption a longer disruption comes up. I've 
often ended up with a stack of tasks each new one pushed to the top of the 
stack more important than the one below it that have had nothing to do with 
any main project.

> These days, in the best case I completely remember what I was
> essentially working on in a matter of 5-15 seconds. After an
> involuntary interruption that left you no time to build your mental
> mark, it could take hours in the worst case.

Or in some cases, you may not remember at all until testing. Even worse, it 
may be that you weren't even in the middle of a piece of code, but had 
suddenly had the thought "Hmm, this design isn't going to work after all. 
Part of the architecture will need to be changed to work xxxx way, because 
of yyyy.". By the time you're back, you're carrying on with the old design 
that later needs to be scrapped as it doesn't work because of yyyy. I don't 
*think* this has ever happened to me, but I see it as a risk.

.