[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Neurological Effects of Computer Programming?
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Ask HN: Neurological Effects of Computer Programming?
Does anyone know of any short or long term neurological effects
(positive/negative) of computer programming/engineering?
Author : amar-laksh
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-09-16 11:21 UTC (1 days ago)
| ryandvm wrote:
| I'll tell you what, it'll aggravate any latent imposter syndrome
| you may be dealing with...
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Sure: you get more rational, logical and objective compared to
| "normies". This is 100% a good thing and an improvement over the
| average person. It's part of why more successful CEOs et al. have
| engineering background than liberal arts.
|
| There's also an effect on couples - my mother became radically
| more rational thanks to living with my father, an ME.
|
| The other aspect: you don't put up with bullshit as readily
| especially of the propaganda/lying forms so common today.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Incredibly ironic comment
| johntdaly wrote:
| Google "Programming ruined my life" or a variation thereof. There
| are 3 things to keep ahead of:
|
| 1) Programming is a sedentary job, if you don't take care of
| yourself (some sport, weight lifting, something keeping you
| active) you will feel physical strains over time.
|
| 2) Burnout is a possibility, I've seen programmers that had
| burnout, not self diagnosed but actual burnout. It was not
| pretty. Ever since I try to watch out for my mental healthy. It
| is easy to be put under enough pressure to break or even put
| yourself under that pressure (imposter syndrome ...)
|
| 3) General negativity and naysaying. Part of the job is finding
| problems, debugging and generally poking holes in ideas so you
| don't waste a lot of time implementing stuff that is impossible
| to begin with. Don't let this become a part of you, don't even
| let this take over in your job. It will rob you of the joy of
| programming.
|
| That is what I gather from articles I've read over time and from
| myself. I am not aware of any research, just anecdotal evidence.
| api wrote:
| A student once asked me an interesting question: "what are the
| occupational hazards of this career?"
|
| Most people naively assume there are not any.
|
| I told them poor health due to a sedentary lifestyle,
| depression, and social isolation.
| swader999 wrote:
| A lot disparage this career for "you sit in front of a
| computer all day" but fail to realize that this is the way a
| lot of other work has gone towards.
| kace91 wrote:
| To be fair, I'd say those are "things this job doesn't
| provide" vs just harm.
|
| Some people get their daily dose of excercise, social
| interaction and dopamine hits from their work. In our field,
| we don't, so we need to find complementary activities for
| that.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 4) Damage to your fingers, wrists, and eyes. (Yeah, I know, the
| people with physical jobs that destroy their bodies are
| breaking out the world's smallest violin...)
|
| At a minimum, carpal tunnel can be considered neurological.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Number 3 is killer. I'm in a private Slack with a bunch of
| white designers and boy are they negative. ANYTHING gets
| released and they hear about it? Teardowns that'll make
| iFixit's head spin!
|
| I take a leave of absence when the force is strong.
| junon wrote:
| Curious, what does the designers being white have to do with
| anything? Are designers of other ethnicities immune to this?
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Could have meant "whiney" and got auto corrected? Idk but
| yeah if mentioning ethnicity was the intention, it's a
| ridiculous statement
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Yes, autocorrect but weird how that still fits. I'll keep
| the typo for transparency.
| junon wrote:
| > but weird how that still fits
|
| Not really though.
| pickledish wrote:
| I think they just meant that all the designers on the
| team happen to be white, so even with the typo, the
| statement is still technically correct.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Yup, this exactly.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| That was a typo but anecdotally, the other Slack I'm in
| with a more diverse group of folks is a lot less negative.
| junon wrote:
| Your skin color has no effect on your personality, sorry.
| The conclusion doesn't make much sense.
| codr7 wrote:
| But a mix of people from different backgrounds will most
| definitely affect the group culture.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This exactly
| junon wrote:
| group culture != negativity/positivity. This is a motte
| and bailey[0] fallacy.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-
| bailey_fallacy
| mistermann wrote:
| Seems it was a typo, but I'd be surprised if creativity,
| self-confidence and other relevant factors are a constant
| across cultures.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Third point actually sums up your whole post. Are there any
| positives?
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Are there any positives?
|
| Have you ever enjoyed solving a puzzle or solving a problem?
| We do that daily, even if we didn't decide which puzzles to
| solve.
|
| Do you find satisfaction in fixing things or making them
| better?
|
| How about designing or building things from scratch? Do you
| find that rewarding?
|
| Flexible schedule? Remote work? Higher pay than XXX?
|
| I think the point is that there are downsides people often
| overlook, not that there aren't any upsides.
| wibagusto wrote:
| Being sedentary or burnt out could happen in any industry so
| I'd argue those need to be categorized more specifically.
| Perhaps:
|
| Language fatigue, zealotry in discussions (e.g the more one
| deals with logic, the more one thinks their way/language is the
| best), pace of evolution (keeping up with new trends is
| sometimes pointless effort because it's a rehash of yesteryear
| --e.g markdown when asciidoc/html is good enough).
|
| Sedentary can be expanded to hyper focus on solving a problem
| leads to self neglect. Programming can be an isolated behavior.
| I'd recommend social coding and attending hackathons and
| meetups.
|
| I'd like to add positive notes: programming has helped me
| reason about the world effectively. For instance, data
| organization, parallel work (applied to people as well as
| machines), iteration methodology (agile mindset can be applied
| to real projects like home renovations), problem solving
| ability (how to isolate issues and reduce a problem into
| something solvable).
| junon wrote:
| #3 is the worst. It's not even contained to my job - it's a
| huge hindrance in life in general.
| randomopining wrote:
| Seriously. It's like you're constantly looking for logical
| reasons why something will fail. Gotta figure out how to stop
| it.
| aspaviento wrote:
| 4) You can't stop noticing how poorly optimized many of the
| things in life are.
| MrQuincle wrote:
| About 3. One of the coolest attitudes I saw was from someone
| (autistic, but that doesn't matter) who approached every
| problem as something to love, to cherish, to appreciate. Now
| I'm reading a book about the early days in Bell labs. I feel
| through the pages how much fun they had with finding issues,
| finding things to improve, finding out the future. I think
| there's so much to gain if you can find a positive approach to
| problems. Also in real life!
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| That book sounds interesting! Could you share a link?
| kace91 wrote:
| > 3) General negativity and naysaying.
|
| I am guilty of this, and I've never thought about it as a
| problem, just as how my mind is wired. That comment was a bit
| of an epiphany for me so thanks!
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Something I discovered as a reviewer was the importance of
| reigning in my own negativity tendency, i.e. to pick holes in
| things. If I reviewed something that I didn't personally
| like, but which would in fact still work, I learned to decide
| whether or not it was worth mentioning it or not. That way I
| wouldn't overload the reviewee with a mass of criticism, and
| the things that would genuinely need changing weren't hidden
| in a flood of picky little points.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| One thing that works for me is trying to push this problem-
| finding routine into general curiosity about the world around
| me... I never expected to get into gardening but I started
| learning more about the plants and weeds growing in my little
| yard, and one thing lead to another. I've also started
| keeping track of the birds.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Number 3 (general negativity and naysaying) is horrible and
| pervasive. It takes a concerted daily effort not to fall too
| far into it.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| At a lot of workplaces (mostly old-line industrial
| companies), programmers are the bottleneck because there
| aren't enough of them. This can lead to feelings of being
| used because seemingly everyone needs you to do something for
| them. This can trigger a generally sour outlook. I don't
| think there's a solution for the first problem, but you can
| change your outlook and see the constant work as job and
| career security. Also it's good to remember that the people
| with lots of downtime or makework at their job aren't
| necessarily shirking; they just don't have the tools to move
| forward without you.
| adoga wrote:
| Any tips on how to improve?
|
| I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude
| lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the
| stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like
| I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though,
| which is part of the problem).
| sdeep27 wrote:
| Explore environments where it's hard for you to be
| jaded/cynical. Nature or being around kids (volunteering to
| teach them how to code is one idea) immediately come to
| mind.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Also, excercise the ability to just not say anything.
|
| By all means, don't bury your head in the sand. But some
| things aren't productive to talk about. Functionally, you
| get the same results whether or not you slight that other
| team / manager / process in a conversation.
|
| Everything is always broken. But we get to choose if we
| only have conversations complaining about broken things.
| specialist wrote:
| > _Any tips on how to improve?_
|
| How you talk changes how you think.
|
| Ages ago, desperate to stop being angry, and completely out
| of any other ideas, I decided "Fine, I'll just fake being
| happy, positive."
|
| Shockingly, after about 3 years, what started out as mostly
| sarcastic, actually mostly worked. From my reading since, I
| stumbled onto techniques known to academics, practitioners.
|
| To get a sense of the mechanics, imagine having the habit
| of swearing all the time, and wanting to stop. Habits can
| be replaced, not unlearned. So I literally scripted
| responses, practiced saying them, tried to use the new
| script in place of my old script, and caught myself when I
| goofed. Both in my head (internal dialog) and interacting
| with others.
|
| It got easier over time.
|
| Backsliding is super easy. Even now, decades later. You
| can't dwell on that. Just acknowledge it and get back to
| the program. (Get back on the horse.)
|
| It helps to have "positive" people in your life that you
| don't want to disappoint. For instance, I'm mostly able to
| avoid trolling here on HN because I really value u/dang's
| approval and efforts and it'd kinda hurts me emotionally to
| disappoint him. Find people IRL to serve in that role.
|
| And avoid other people displaying the habits you're trying
| to not do yourself.
|
| Forgive yourself. Choose to become the best version of
| yourself. Be kind to yourself.
|
| Good luck.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is so true. I once had someone explain the problem
| very concisely: we tend to believe the things we hear
| frequently, even if we're the ones saying them. So we
| need to pay close attention to how we talk to ourselves.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Could you suggest some common negative expressions to map
| to more positive ones?
|
| It'd be great if we could put together a list/gist.
| specialist wrote:
| Ya. Now that you point it out, that's a glaring omission.
|
| It was a great deal of effort to monitor myself, flag the
| negative stuff, dig down to determine my actual root
| goal, and then figure out some kind of alternate positive
| framing.
|
| Complimentary to this was learning that all negatives can
| be stated as a positive. (Something I got from an in-
| house corporate communications seminar, if you can
| believe that.)
|
| My go to example from parenting is to say "Please walk"
| instead of "Don't run!". It was super effective!
|
| (Transformed my parenting. Used my son as my guinea pig.
| I hadn't yet learned about positive reinforcement, which
| is really too bad.)
|
| So. I'll start journaling expressions, as I remember
| them.
|
| Thanks.
| mistermann wrote:
| A second pass of criticality on your own prediction can be
| helpful, especially if you can trick your mind into not re-
| using the identical logic and "facts" (heuristics upon
| premises, etc) when making the initial judgement.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| It's a fantastic way to get top comments here though.
| rajangdavis wrote:
| Anecdotally, it makes it easier to map disparate things into
| something more structured. I would rather have spaghetti code
| than a spaghetti brain.
|
| Problem solving is dominant in my way of thinking which can be
| good or bad depending on the context. It's helpful for giving
| advice but terrible from an empathetic and listening standpoint.
|
| On the negative side, I have hard time reading emotional tone in
| text.
|
| It does not aid in communication nor soft/social skills.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Are there any positives?
| amar-laksh wrote:
| It's so telling that most of the comments here are either:
| cautionary tales or negative effects. I sure feel young and naive
| in this audience.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Everyone who has programmed full-time for a good number of
| years will have had some of the negative effects, even though
| many go in loving programming itself. Things around
| programming, mostly the very things that make programming a
| practical skill, like making money, using frameworks and
| libraries, deadlines etc can make it a horrorshow. If I just
| work on little fun projects no one will ever see, I am that boy
| from 40 years ago again who loved every second of writing
| software.
| adflux wrote:
| Losing people skills. Not running into many women in your place
| of work. Your group of friends consisting of mostly (programming)
| men, who struggle to meet or even talk to women.
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| This hit close to home. I don't think it's exclusive to
| programmers. I think this is happening in all industries, we
| just see it to a greater degree. Everyone's aware of
| polarization in politics, but I think it's happening to race,
| gender, and any other culturally distinct segment of humanity.
| With all this increased connectedness, we're distilling into
| groups that are like-minded, politically and otherwise.
|
| I went to an all boys school. I believe it was terrible for
| social development and made it hard to relate to women. When I
| see that same-sex education is on the rise I feel we're making
| a big mistake.
| amar-laksh wrote:
| I've found talking to myself out loud while coding kinda helps
| with that.
| jraph wrote:
| I don't see many positive things in this thread. I'd like to cast
| some positive light here.
|
| I don't know if my mindset is what lead me to programming or if
| this is a virtuous circle, but I value how I approach concepts,
| ideas and people interactions in life, thinking clearly and
| consciously about problems and situations, including people
| problem, and I'd not be surprised to learn these things could be
| linked. There is also some creativity through out-of-the-box
| thinking to come up with solutions to random problems.
|
| This stuff can be trained through other (analytical) activities
| than programming too, of course.
|
| I do a lot of programming in my spare time and I don't see clear
| drawbacks specific to programming.
|
| Approach life positively, be open-minded, be patient, your
| opinion is not necessarily the right one, don't be over-
| confident, spend energy into understanding the perspective of
| other people, etc. All this should be applied to programming too
| as soon as you work with other people anyway.
|
| Programming does not make you antisocial in itself, and can
| certainly actually help if you leverage and transpose the rights
| skills at the right time. If you are the kind of people who are
| very analytical, even in interactions with people, that's a
| strength that can make you a very lovable, trusty person if you
| don't make it creepy. It can help you provide balanced,
| reasonable, valuable insight to someone who is confiding in you
| for instance. People may trust you for avoiding saying pleasant
| but false things, which makes your pleasant feedback more trusty.
| You'll find pleasant but true stuff to say anyway, thanks to your
| problem-solving mindset.
|
| I also spend a lot of time with various people (most of them not
| being programmers) and going outside, and that's also a very
| important aspect of who I am. Programming does not prevent this.
| feisar wrote:
| for me i speak differently and write differently writing: i do
| not use capitals or p unless i force myself to type a capital
| letter or punctuation speaking: when i dont pay attention i use
| "!" and "null"
| booleandilemma wrote:
| You missed a semicolon at the end there.
| sdeep27 wrote:
| I think it's a great question, and one that specialists of all
| fields should ask themselves (->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnel...
| ).
|
| As a solution, everyone will find different things that work for
| them, but doing things that have no relation physically/mentally
| to work (screen time, high logic use, software related problems,
| sitting) and essentially are on the opposite end of the spectrum,
| like hiking, swimming, tennis have helped for me.
| amar-laksh wrote:
| Thank you so much for the term! This is exactly what I was
| looking for in order to start a deep dive that hopefully will
| help with Deformation professionnelle! :D
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Makes you think the universe is a computer and other such
| obsessions
| silverscania wrote:
| It might be
| marton78 wrote:
| It is!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM
| mbar84 wrote:
| Who knows about correlation or causation, but programming and
| humility go together. Training people to always ask the
| questions: - How do I know that this is true?
| - What would otherwise have to be true for this conclusion to
| follow? - How can I bisect this process to test a
| hypothesis?
|
| So much wishful thinking and jumping to conclusions could be
| avoided if programming (and debugging more specifically) is a
| training to viscerally understand the scientific method.
| swayvil wrote:
| Speaking as a meditation guy.
|
| When you spend a lot of time concentrating your attention (as we
| do when solving our engineering puzzles) you tend to stay
| concentrated. It becomes a lifestyle.
|
| And when you spend a lot of time concentrating on ideas, you tend
| to stay concentrated on ideas. Ideas are your world.
|
| But ideas are not the world. The world is infinitely larger.
|
| And concentration is brother to blindness. Which is to say,
| concentrating on X leads to ignoring Y, Z and Q.
|
| Pardon me if this is vague.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Meditation is an amazing thing. Its impact on your mind and
| your understanding of your mind can be profound.
|
| Sadly, many of the people who could most use the practice find
| the whole concept to be laughable.
| fvv wrote:
| don't worry it's not vague I think both types of thinking are
| needed, creativity can be suppressed by too much concentration
| or fatigue, but it certainly becomes more effective if
| nourished by the knowledge that concentration helps to obtain
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| > Ideas are your world.
|
| Wow, I feel that this describes me perfectly. I've never
| considered it before, but I tend to think in hypotheticals,
| generalized broad solutions or abstract concepts. I rarely
| spend brain power thinking of practical or tangible things.
| Maybe this is a consequence of (or reinforced by) programming
| since an early age.
|
| It has certainly taken it's toll. I'm always the one that
| forgets social occasions, leaves a mess and have sub-par social
| skills. My mind is always "in the clouds" so to speak.
| siva7 wrote:
| This is a good topic and vastly underappreciated. It's a career
| where you should closely listen to your body and have an active
| lifestyle due to the sedentary nature of this career. When it
| doesn't feel right stop for the day and look after yourself. Do
| some sport, meet friends. If it doesn't help, change jobs. Never
| let someone above abuse you. Otherwise your health will start to
| suffer in the years coming.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I read a about a study which considered how scientists and
| engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The
| scientists considered their code as an extension of their own
| thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how the
| code could fail.
|
| There is probably also a virtuous cycle which reinforces how the
| scientist and engineer view their code, so it may be hard to
| untangle how much of that thought pattern was "innate" vs
| learned.
|
| I think your question is interesting and I wonder if it may
| depend (in part) on one's motivations for writing software.
| civilized wrote:
| > I read a about a study which considered how scientists and
| engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The
| scientists considered their code as an extension of their own
| thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how
| the code could fail.
|
| This makes sense when you consider _why_ they 're writing the
| code. Scientists use code as an electronic brain to answer
| scientific questions that are too complicated to answer
| mentally or with pen and paper. Engineers create services that
| don't necessarily answer scientific questions, but do useful
| work and need to be reliable.
|
| There is a substantial intersection though: for example, Google
| provides services that answer interesting/scientific questions,
| like "what are people saying on the internet" and "the
| frequency of words in books over time", while also being
| thoroughly engineered for performance and reliability.
| dekhn wrote:
| I constantly interpret everything in life as a programming
| optimization problem. It drives everybody around me crazy.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Same here, although I mostly keep it to myself with non-
| programmers.
| gjvnq wrote:
| And that's how I started having problems enjoing games like
| Factorio.
| amar-laksh wrote:
| I do that too! That's part of the reason I was wondering what
| it does to our brains long-term
| marton78 wrote:
| When you start dreaming about yourself being code and
| consisting of modules you know you've done something to your
| brain.
| woolcap wrote:
| I once had a dream where I could 'pipe' physical objects
| through a bash command-line...
| bobthechef wrote:
| This is the Law of Instrument. It's a disease. (It isn't a
| "neurological effect", pace what the other commenter suggests
| and despite whatever neurological correlates it has, strictly
| speaking.)
|
| To broaden your horizons, consider diversifying your interests.
| Don't use ALL your time programming. Devote some of the free
| time you might be using to program for others things that
| broaden the mind. Try good literature (classics), good
| philosophy (approachable in the way its written unless you want
| to become a scholar of this stuff), and leisure. Literature
| helps you break out of the prejudices of your own culture.
| Philosophy lets you develop a clearer grasp of the big picture
| and ultimate reality. Leisure (NOT recreation) entails the
| passive absorption of the world around you and allows it to
| enter into your mind without you running your gears all the
| time. Contemplation is perhaps the purest form of leisure. It
| dissolves our alienation from reality. Turn those gears off and
| you have a better chance to break out of your mental rut.
|
| Over time, you will put programming in its place.
| dekhn wrote:
| thanks for the lecture, but I already have a garage full of
| hobbies (to which I apply computer optimization techniques)
| and a family (to whom I've tried, but failed, to apply
| computer optimization techniques). I read for fun, etc, but I
| don't think any of that is going to change my mind.
| codr7 wrote:
| It's not all bad.
|
| If you can stop yourself from finding faults with
| everything, thinking about life in terms of complex systems
| is not a terrible idea.
| dekhn wrote:
| One day, I read a foodback (a feedback suggestion) at
| Google from Jeff Dean. He told the food people they could
| turn a buffet line into two lines by letting people go
| down the other side at the same time, doubling
| throughput.
| ferd wrote:
| You might enjoy reading "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer
| Science of Human Decisions"
| agentcoops wrote:
| I've discussed the topic of "aphantasia" (the inability to form
| mental images [0]) with programmers at various jobs as well as
| with non-developer friends. It's certainly anecdata, but it's
| always been curious to me that I've only ever heard engineers
| identify with this condition -- and more frequently than the
| understood likelihood of it within the general population would
| lead me to expect.
|
| So, again, not a known neurological effect of programming, but an
| interesting correlation I've observed between many of the best
| programmers I've known and the condition of aphantasia.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| ryandvm wrote:
| Interesting. I'm a software developer and I've only recently
| become aware that I seem to be deficient in this area. For
| example, I can imagine the concept of particular person's face
| (shape, features, etc.), but there's not really a visual aspect
| to it in my mind's eye. Of course, it's kind of hard to figure
| out if what you imagine is what somebody else imagines.
| agentcoops wrote:
| Coincidentally, within the original 1880 study [0] that first
| grappled with the phenomena it was most highly-correlated with
| scientists. He concludes that: "scientific men as a class have
| feeble powers of visual representation... My own conclusion is,
| that an over-readiness to perceive clear mental pictures is
| antagonistic to the acquirement of habits of highly generalised
| and abstract thought."
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160416064610/http://psychclass...
| [deleted]
| qq4 wrote:
| I know that when I get into a "flow state" while programming I
| tell my spouse to have patience with the way I reason/talk for
| the next few hours. Best way I can describe how I feel is the
| Tetris effect turned up to 11.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
| jcul wrote:
| I can relate to this.
|
| Especially after intense bouts of focusing on particularly
| complex problems, I might experience thoughts and have dreams
| in strange logic / programming kind of modes, unlike normal
| linguistic thought patterns.
|
| And non physically real things, like dreaming about wanting a
| drink in strange logic. Or if I'd been working on something
| very multithreaded, thinking in fragmented parallel modes.
|
| Very hard to describe it with normal language. Can be almost
| disturbing when you wake and get back into normal thinking mode
| as it is difficult to relate to the previous mode.
| L_226 wrote:
| Anecdote time: When I was in university I worked in a
| supermarket as a cashier. I became extremely efficient in
| packing groceries, in fact I took it as a point of pride to
| pack items as effectively as possible. Soft items on top or
| separately, tesselating boxed items and fully utilising bag
| space - without compromising bag integrity, approximately equal
| and manageable bag weights and sizes bespoke to the customer's
| strength. And everything FAST. I had repeat customers come
| specifically to me just for my packing. But I found that after
| my shifts I would nearly always dream about packing groceries,
| and operating the register.
|
| These days I still enjoy arranging and packing my own groceries
| when shopping, to the infinite exasperation of my partner. I
| also enjoy the same thing with the dishwasher...
| drq wrote:
| So that's why I so much enjoy packing the dishwasher and
| optimizing how I arrange all the items. Interesting....
| codr7 wrote:
| I do this, and I never worked in any supermarkets.
|
| It's just so mind-numbingly boring and frustrating in itself
| so turning it into a challenge helps me cope and even enjoy
| it.
| liamwire wrote:
| I've experienced this carry-over into my verbal communication
| with my partner before, it's nice to have a name for it.
| sourdoughness wrote:
| Plus one here: I get a strong case of the cliche "man must fix
| problem" after a solid day of programming. It's helpful when
| you can keep it in balance, but it's definitely not the right
| tool for all situations.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| This reminds me of a great scene from "Halt and Catch Fire".
| The lead engineer, Gordon, is supposed to be making dinner
| for his kids and putting them to bed while his wife is away,
| but he notices a small leak from the kitchen sink. He then
| drops all plans and next you see him under the sink. Marital
| problems ensue.
| swayvil wrote:
| Woo! new tv show to watch
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| It's really good, both as a drama with great characters,
| and as a show about tech.
| phkahler wrote:
| Common in real life: Wife comes home and tells husband
| about shit gone wrong in her day. Husband interprets this
| as asking for help solving those problems and starts
| offering suggestions. No, he was just supposed to listen.
| is0tope wrote:
| Definitely interesting phenomenon, I wasn't aware it had a
| name. The closest thing to this for me was when I played
| factorio for a week.
|
| I feel like if you are a programmer that game will resonate
| with you heavily, making it possibly addictive. I set myself a
| goal of building the rocket, and then stopping. I know people
| however who went off the deep end with mods etc hah!
|
| The thing I remember most however was how it invaded my dreams.
| I found myself dreaming at least a few times of conveyor belts,
| pickers and trains. I think possibly this was some low level
| version of the aforementioned effect.
| geijoenr wrote:
| I confirm I used to experience this as well, and I have the
| feeling it also has some long lasting effect in one's
| communication abilities.
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