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A relatable situation (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 112 points 2 years ago (19 children)

After 5PM stop looking for a fix, start looking for a stopping point and write up some notes to review when you’re fresh again.

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  • [–] 138 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    No. I've almost got it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    After 5PM stop looking for a fix, start looking for a stopping point and write up some notes to review when you’re fresh again.

    Hot Take Incomming...

    No. My best successes were when I stayed on point and pushed through the fatigue and solved the problem. Taking a 'go to bed and come back to the office fresh' type of break would inevitably set me back, as I would have to pick up my train of thought again, to get back "into the zone" of the problem and solving it. Its another form of an interruption while you are trying to concentrate, and can interrupt an 'Eureka!' moment in problem solving.

    It truly sucks having to work the extra hours, and if the project management is so bad that you're doing it all the time, then you need to find other work, but sometimes, 'sticking it out' is the solution to the problem, finishing what you started.

    Having said that, if I've pushed through the fatigue multiple times in multiple hours, so that its super hard to push again, THEN that would be the point where I walk away from the problem for the evening. Its not an either/or thing, but its definately stick around and try to solve longer than the advice I'm replying to would suggest.

    One last thing. The above advice was given by someone who spent most of their career self-employeed and working an hourly rate. You're expected to solve the problems others can't because you're getting paid more, and your time is compensated accordingly to the amount of work you are putting in. If you are a salaried employee, especially one who is low paid, I would then advise you to consider other things than strict professionalism, like QoL issues vs compensation gained, etc.

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I’ve had plenty of breakthroughs at 9PM, but most of those could have been gotten at 11AM the next day without neglecting my family.

    Writing notes for yourself is useful as a form of “rubber duck debugging”.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    I’ve had plenty of breakthroughs at 9PM, but most of those could have been gotten at 11AM the next day without neglecting my family.

    You're a better coder than I am/was then. Everytime, without fail, if I took that break at 9pm, left work, and came back the next day, I never solved that problem.

    You come into the office the next day and you have more/new problems to solve on top of the one you were trying to solve the night before, and you have to try to get back 'into the zone' of the problem solving for that one single problem (especially when you've had to do a bunch of configurations to your IDE for the last-night problem being worked on), very problematic to do when the office is busy.

    Speaking of, forgot to mention that point, but working late usually gives you a quieter office environment to work in. Its always why I would try to start work at 10am (or later) on any project I was one, give me an hour or three of "quiet' at the end of the day to wrap up work uninterrupted.

    Edit: Forgot to mention in my reply, but ...

    without neglecting my family

    I made sure to never do that. Balancing Life/Work is always tough, but staying employeed with a great income sometimes takes better care of your family than being home late for dinner one evening.

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    The trick is leaving good notes to yourself outlining the thought process, what was tried, what should be tried next.

    Then you read your notes in the morning with a fresh mind and <click!>

    If you just slam the laptop shut in frustration, you lose all progress.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    For me what generally happens if I stop at 9PM, I will work through the problem in my sleep (and it will prevent me from getting a good night sleep), but I will often find a breakthrough the next morning during shower time.

    I’m talking about those hard, multi-days debugging problems that nobody can figure out, but as someone else raised, that’s why I get paid good money for it.

    It still sucks though. That first response in the thread rings so true, ok now I get it, no you don’t…

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Generally speaking (NOT 100% of the time), that takes more time that you don't have, as you're outrunning fatigue. You can waste time writing down notes (which you're supposed to do anyway in-line in the code as you go streamlined like), or you can solve the problem. Plus the quality of the notes you leave, if written up at the end when you're ready to leave work, may not be good enough to help the next day. /shrug

    But honestly, if that works for you, more power to ya! 🙂

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I take notes as I work in case I get pulled onto another task.

    Doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to summarize at the end of the day.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago

    Doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to summarize at the end of the day.

    I take notes in-line as I go too. But having to stop and then write (well, type in a text editor) everything I was thinking about for the last X hours, when I'm super fatigued, can be problematic for me to do. At the point I quit, I'm not really thinking anymore, even just to summarize the day.

    This comment is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Not sure why this is being downvoted. My main takeaway is just that while taking a break works for a lot of people a lot of the time, for this person sometimes it doesn't.

    People are different and sometimes if you are new to something, it's helpful to see both the popular advice (take a break) and that it might not always work for some people (this poster).

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