Advice for the Struggling Programmer

If you’re working on program at 4am and you’re stuck on something for more than 15 minutes GO TO SLEEP.

The answer will come to you in the morning.1

  1. Drawn from personal experiences. ↩

March 13, 2008 | Filed Under Programming 

Comments

2 Responses to “Advice for the Struggling Programmer”

  1. wakes on June 5th, 2008 1:26 am

    I completely agree. Infact this morning I got woken up part way through a dream where I was actually resolving the problem. I guess all the other times this ‘brilliant inspiration’ has happened I’ve just remembered the solution when I woke up, just not the dream..

    I’ve always liked the idea of an alarm clock which wakes you gently just as you’re leaving your dreaming phase/REM sleep just to see if you can nod back off and do the whole lucid dreaming thing easily.

  2. Patrick on July 30th, 2008 10:31 pm

    Sleeping has always been tough for me because I’m considered a night owl and for years I’ve enjoyed the night… mind you, this all was really aided by a job I took out of high school where I worked the graveyard shift. I suppose it’s stuck with me ever since.

    There are studies galore on the values of adequate sleep and I’m only now beginning to understand it. But I still find myself fighting the urge and think to myself, “I can’t go to sleep now! The answer to my problem is just minutes away…”, yet I’m exhausted and those minutes then turn into hours, ad infinitum until I just drop. Sure enough, by the first half of the next day following substantial rest, that solution I was looking for usually comes to me spontaneously as if out of mid-air or by magic.

    Well made point Rob.

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