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Programming Is Mostly Thinking

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Pretend you have a really great programming day.   You only have to attend a few meetings, have only a few off-topic conversations, don't get distracted or interrupted much, don't have to do a bunch of status or time reporting, and you put in a good six hours of serious programming [note: this RARELY happens in an 8-10 hour day].   I want to review your work in the morning, so I print out a diff of your day's work before going home.   Sadly, overnight the version control system crashes and they have to recover from the previous day's backup. You have lost an entire day's work.   If I give you the diff, how long will it take you to type the changes back into the code base and recover your six-hours' work? Programming is 11/12ths Thinking I've been touting this figure for some time now, and people keep asking me where the study is that produced such an odd number. Well, it's not pulled out of thin air and it's not the result of a thoro...
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Is It My Fault You Can't Handle The Truth?

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You can't handle it! In 2018 or 2019, I was introduced to the idea of hyper-rationality. I think it was under another name (to be given shortly) and as part of a presentation by George Dinwiddie on, of all things, estimation. It was a funny place to be introduced to ideas from psychology and family therapy, as well as organizational psychology and collaboration, but there it is. It is nice to be smart. It's extra nice to be right. It is wonderfully nice to be right, smart, rational, and helpful to others. Sometimes we put too much emphasis on being right and forget to be helpful. Hyper-rationality is a state of being excessively or inordinately rational. It is a belief in rational truth as an unassailable fortress, that being correct is all that matters. For instance, consider the sentiment that if I am right or I am telling the truth  then you have no right to be offended or upset. It might feel right, but it sounds wrong. When people are acting hyper-ra...
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