#Idle Archives - Sterling Terrell

Made me laugh a little bit, honestly.

Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it.
Impatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.
Hubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about.

I particularly love the idea of more work now – for less work later.

But I enjoy a good morning flâner.

We all want less stress, of course.

Right? Right.

But how do we get there?

I like the point that Derek Sivers raises with this story.

Option A is stress and worry and everyone grumpy.
Option B is easy and relaxed and happy.

Yet too often people move from B to A for a 5% better outcome.

Satisfaction should not go from 90% to 50% – for a 5% increase in productivity.

But I see companies do this to their employees all the time!

We were making 100 units per week and everyone was happy. Now we’re making 105 units per week and everyone hates their jobs.

I think this issue is an issue of systems over goals.

Systems are measured action regardless of outcome – while goals can be frantic and unconsidered, with only outcome in mind.

And no – penguins do not fly. 😉

The Three Virtues Of A Programmer