Being An Efficient Developer | Prime Reacts

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

if the maturity comments hurt you, perhaps you need a bit of maturity to hear such things

[@Cvar00]

You should offer a free "Adulting" course on Frontend Masters

[@someman7]

I think you're forgetting that Jesus freed you. Most of these people don't have (that much) faith. People, by themselves, are unable - see John 15:5. All good comes from God. All good. Remember that :) EDIT: Case in point: You and I are free from porn by the grace of God (and through custody of eyes to which He calls us - eg Job 31:1, Matthew 6:22, Matthew 5:30). Would we ever be without God? How many are free from it in the world? Abide in Jesus. 1 John 2:14-17

[@junesuprise]

You’re dumb

[@RazzleStorm]

As someone about the same age as Prime, I think the maturity comment is on point, but also it’s potentially easier for our generation to ignore phones and notifications because we still grew up in a time when immediate, constant availability wasn’t the norm.

[@Firehazard159]

Imo, you're suffering the ability to understand an experience that isn't yours (which, is also a sign of maturity.) For me, I have adhd. On meds, I can function close to what you experience. Off meds, I have executive function disorder. Literally adhd. The problem with the distraction aspect isn't typically email notifications, but people walking into my office and talking to me destroys a complex mind palace that I can't easily rebuild. Now that I'm on meds? Significantly easier. Just because you can't relate to an experience does not mean that experience is invalid. I really respect your views overall and enjoy your content. This was just one bad take. Won't stop me from watching, and it was entertaining to watch you fumble over it, but it's real.

[@keyser456]

Let's not forget the requirements for the application are ever-changing. You're told to build a tiny house, so you start laying the foundation for a tiny house. Months later they want a freaking castle and wonder why you can't just insert said castle on that tiny house foundation. As a result, senior devs start making the mistake of over-architecting every single thing they build, just in case. Round and round we go.

[@JonathanTheZombie]

Extensibility 👍🏻

[@kristun216]

Well can you blame them?

[@ShadoFXPerino]

Well yeah if the over-architecting pays off and the ridiculous request is delivered up on then over-architecting happens more often

[@JaconSamsta]

And there is a fear of tearing something down and building anew. If the new requirements are so at odds with the system you have built, the answer should be to build a new system, not to make every possible system you ever build in your life extensible to the nth degree. Of course if you invest all of those resources into building your super extensible system, or building an ugly monolith despite it not being extensible, then it's going to start feeling really bad to tear down. I'd wager this is one of the reasons a lot of people like micro services and other distributed architectures. Build a system around a small amount of requirements, and if things get out of hand spin up another system. You might even be able to share libraries and other tooling, but otherwise don't have to care about the design decisions made on other projects. And even if you need to rewrite large parts of one of the services, it's going to be much easier to sledgehammer your way through a smaller more dedicated codebase and fix things as you are breaking them, than accommodating them in a giant monolith.

[@keyser456]

@@ShadoFXPerino It's far more common over-architecting leads to the project running over budget and over schedule, often never seeing the light of day. Seen it a thousand times. Especially these days w/ cloud, containers, CI/CD, micro-apps/services, DI, AOT, and on and on and on. So easy to get caught up in preparing for what-if scenarios and lose focus on the goal of the project. I heard this a while ago, and I really like it and try to adhere to it. Just in time is better than just in case. It's not a hard and fast principle, but it makes sense. There are an infinite # of what-ifs.

[@_idiot]

Prime doesn't believe in "Flow" state when working cause he's hopped up on G-Fuel and breastmilk

[@Sapperbounded]

Many many wise people have said to me some variation of this same idea in multiple different fields, not just programming: You want to go fast. You go fast by going smooth. You go smooth by going slow. Slow is fast. That doesn't mean to dick around and waste your time, but being deliberate and actually thinking about what you're doing will save FAR more time than just shooting off at the hip and flying by the seat of your pants.

[@metaltyphoon]

Prime: I don’t forget Prime: Side tracks for 10 seconds, forgets to read an entire paragraph.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

what are we talking about?

[@ambhaiji]

lol

[@XDarkGreyX]

"Lemme read that big ass paragraph once more"

[@chrsolr]

Hahahah

[@luskira]

HAHAHAHHAHAHA

[@SolarSonic12]

On the matter of interruptions… task and focus switching is an executive function task that relies on short term/working memory to act as that swap space so that the context can be retrieved after the interruption. ADHD and other executive function disorders impact the availability/use of working memory, as well as the parts of the brain handling the memory juggling and focus switching. 10 to 15 minutes seems a bit of an exaggeration, but I can attest after 30 years of futile effort to get better at task switching and multitasking (because no one wants to suck at basic life skills that are frequently demanded by one’s environment) that I still experience this challenge. What would be a small disruption to others often is a substantial one for me. It is accurate though that just like some people are shite at multitasking for no fault of their own, some are amazing at it. So kudos to you, and thanks for using your talents to entertain us all :) (but also, could we not so casually dismiss different brain wiring as a valid excuse that people experience the world and function differently? Last I checked, dyslexia would also count)

[@kkiimm009]

I don't forget anything after getting distracted. But If I was in a hyperfocused effective flow state then I am unlikely to easily get back into that. I am sadly not able to enter that at will. But I don't often get distracted while in that state. Probably because I don't easily register when someone tries to contact me when I am in that state and most usually take the hint that I am busy.

[@StefanHanrath]

If i’m working on debugging a memory image of a process, that already almost takes the IDE 10 minutes to even load 😅

[@segueoyuri]

@@kkiimm009 "I am sadly not able to enter that at will" nobody is

[@segueoyuri]

1 - AFAIK this 10-15 minute distraction thing is based on research. I'm not be able to give you the reference because I've probably read this in a magazine some 15 years ago, but AFAIK this is solid. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with any disorder, this is how human concentration work. 2 - try this yourself. Start to read a novel and notice how long it'll take for you to be as focused on it as you were before the interruption (I did sth similar when I read about it the first time). It has nothing to do with code, or with working for that matter. It's how the brain works. Now writing code is a VERY unusual and concentration intensive task. It seems pretty logical your code would suffer from distractions. Again AFAIK, this is the same process behind the usual attention span being 50min on, 10min off. And the same process also behind how hypnosis work. 3 - this is all without taking into account we live in the era of distraction, social media and smartphones. Not checking your phone (almost forgetting it exists) also help with concentration, productivity AND less bugs in your code. Most people do not have the 1 hour attention span anymore - I have to retrain myself from time to time with a time, actually. And people usually consider me a pretty focused person.

[@SolarSonic12]

@@segueoyuri Perhaps it was unclear, but my comment wasn't addressing the 10-15 minute statistic. It was addressing the comments dismissing that there might be neurological differences that impact one's ability to improve their attention and focus. I was just pointing out that there are disorders that impact the wiring of the parts of the brain that manage focus and attention, and anyone with such a condition would be impacted in their ability to overcome attention and focus issues through sheer effort and discipline. Not that they shouldn't try, or that effort and discipline wouldn't improve things. Just that the ROI for effort and willpower applied isn't going to be the same for everyone.

[@RaduCiocan]

I think the problem with interuptions is not that you forgot a lot and need to go from the beginning, it's more like after one interruption you're more likely pick up your phone or whatever and continue the chain of interruptions.

[@CamembertDave]

In my experience, it's less forgetting everything and needing to restart, and more forgetting some little thing which then introduces a bug.

[@Kwazzaaap]

or if something is complex enough forgetting one detail may lead to you writing a solution that just falls apart and then having to rewrite or just keep glueing on fixes

[@11pasa11]

The final boss of interuption is when someone messages you. You answer 2 minutes later then they ghost you. Now that totally kills my focus because now I am actively waiting for them to reply back, so I can get them out of my mind and I don't even know when I am going to get a reply, so I can't get my mind off it easily

[@thomasmathews4592]

I don't think I "forget" the code when I get an interruption, it is more that you just lose the sense of the layout and control flow that you've built up that allows you to write the next bit without explicitly thinking about the surrounding code. Like when you are on the motorway for a while and you maybe stop checking your mirrors (even though you should never do this) because you've been on there long enough to have built up a map of what is around you and you know nothing is going to suddenly appear in a blind spot because you've been keeping a general eye out far behind you for ages, and for something to be in that blind spot they'd have had to approach you for a while and you'd have noticed. So when you get a code interruption you switch from the effortless "flow" state programming into a much more effortful attempt to build up that map again, where you have to think more explicitly about the structure and where the control flow is going and what the edge cases were etc and remember why you did all the minor bits. You don't completely forget what you were doing, you can probably remember what the next task was, and you remember your overall plan, but you are writing at a much slower pace than you were prior to the interruption. The more complex the logic the more you are relying on this sort of subconscious map of the code to proceed I think, because it's difficult to hold everything in your limited conscious working memory. If someone interrupts me whilst I'm writing some validation for a form it will have no impact, if someone interrupts me whilst I am investigating a complex bug that is occurring somewhere in the interactions between 20 different micro services, or whilst writing something algorithmically complex, it probably does cost 15-25 minutes (although you aren't sitting there doing nothing for that time, you are just less productive for the next 45 mins or so) And also you have to factor in those days when you are just continuously being interrupted and can never get into that state to begin with, and you can get through a whole day of work having done an amount of work you could do in 2 hours on a day without continuous interruptions.

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

I think that focus argument is taken slightly wrong by Primeagen (or maybe I misunderstood cuz I didn't hear what the man in the video was saying properly). But basically, I'd say a 30 sec distraction can break your flow. Then, getting back into the flow/zone can take you another 10mins.

[@hardcorecode]

What ?? No, 10 minutes! ..... that's crazy!

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

@@hardcorecode I may have thrown that number in without much thought, but I can't imagine it's not b/w 5-10 mins. Getting into your flow zone where you code at lightning speed requires you to keep all of your concurrent train of thoughts and decision variables in my mind simultaneously. You can lose them quite quickly, and then you gotta rebuild that. That does take that much time for me, maybe I'm dumb.

[@jimhrelb2135]

Flow for me is 2 hour. I think I don't deserve my position then...

[@CamembertDave]

Yeah, it seems like he's talking about focus as simply avoiding being distracted, but there is a wide gulf between having all your attention on the code and having all awareness of yourself and your surroundings dissolve away leaving only your mind directly interfacing with the code. Snapping back from a distraction to the former may only take a second, but the latter takes more than an hour with no interruptions.

[@VivekYadav-ds8oz]

@@jimhrelb2135 no no, getting into flow is significantly harder than getting back into flow. It very well takes coding on the order of hours (for me it's about an hour give or take) to break into it.

[@wywarren]

Earlier in my dev days I’d lose track when I was interrupted and took a while to get back, but looking back a lot of it was due to me trying to think too many steps ahead without plotting my though process and option down in paper (or pseudo code comments). Nowadays when I’m interrupted it’s less obtrusive because I’ve left enough breadcrumbs to jump back on the horse. However if trying to work with clean code and you have 25 functions instead of 20 lines, this methodology can get tricky.

[@tc2241]

100%, people are using ADHD as a crutch for this argument. I’d posit, that if you’re truly unable to resume, you did not fully understand the problem/solution. Eureka moments don’t just come from nothing, but lots of small decisions, you should be able to work back from one of those decisions points. Writing things down if your memory is fuzzy or you’re easily distracted, is a phenomenal way to do that (as you also stated). I keep paper, whiteboards or a writing tablet next to me at all times and treat it like a git commit to help create nodes in my head, not necessarily to read.

[@kyuss789]

The greatest skill you can get as a professional programmer is looking at a message/notification and being like “that can wait”. It’s hard because socially you don’t want to seem like you are ignoring someone

[@Spitfire5592]

Take, by fighting an addiction you’ve learned a skill that you HAD TO learn to escape despair that others have not had as a motivator.

[@kuhluhOG]

When I write code, I "optimize" for one thing: making it as easy as possible (for somebody else) to understand it. Sometimes that's a on line function. Sometimes that's a 50 line function. Some it's a whole paragraph as a comment because the thing (which can be literally one or two lines of code) can't be dumped down into a handful of words (luckily very rare, but happens, but interestingly enough, the more the existing code base follows "Clean Code", the more likely this happens).

[@xTriplexS]

15:25 This hits so hard actually. I'm allergic to notifications. I gotta check and get rid of them as soon as they arrive so I don't see that stupid blinking light

[@michaeldausmann6736]

the distraction thing is context dependent. Most of the time, you are right, distractions only cost a bit of context but there are definitely times when you are right at the limit of your 7/8/9 things on your brain stack... maybe you are deep diving some edge case where an open source lib 3 transitives deep made a stoopid decision, maybe you are debugging some complicated bug with a script, in a container that calls a java function, which you have mocked......etc you get it right? when a distraction pushes you over that limit and all the cards fall on the floor.

[@mwaffi]

On the whole distraction thing. I think Prime you're a bit of an exception here. I know a few developers with very good focus, but they are quite rare. I have a book recommendation for you: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari.

[@Eric-lw5yq]

Prime: Your brain is different from mine? STOP!

[@chewysfish6967]

it depends on the person interrupting me and the interruption. If the person put no effort into the question, now you have to do their job for them, and they do it on a regular basis, the distraction can waste a lot of time. If the person always tries their hardest, clearly put in the effort, and you work with them to figure out the answer, then there is almost no downtime.

[@lifelover69]

Great point. And there is even more effort needed in a multi-national workplace, because of the language barrier.

[@chewysfish6967]

​@@lifelover69​I worked with people in China for the better part of a decade. The language certainly does make it harder but its not really in the same realm of distraction, I'm not frustrated because some one from china doesn't know English very well, I get frustrated because some one tells me the data is good and its a problem with my program, and I spend hours on it only to find out that the data is infract not good and my program is fine

[@em00k]

Regarding the 15 mins interruption, try writing a complex routine in assembly. The idea is that when you are interrupted, it takes you 10-15 mins to get back into it.

[@c4tubo]

Complexity grows with every line of code written. The only way to keep it manageable is to make an intentional effort to reduce that complexity at every opportunity. Unfortunately no software team working in commerce does this, ever. "Clean code" and "clean architecture" take the wrong approach of ADDING more artifice to make the complexity manageable while not actually reducing it. I have never seen this work in all of the decades following this mentality. I'm now embracing a theme of minimalism and SUBTRACTING code wherever possible.

[@theondono]

I think a lot of those issues are related. *If* your codebase is a mess, then context takes a lot of time to develop, because your code no longer behaves as a coherent state machine, but as a convoluted mess of state machines with thousands if not millions of possible states. In my experience people who love to use debuggers have this issue way more often, since they rely on being “in the moment”, executing synchronously with their machines.

[@oldspammer]

I recently read a sequence of web pages that described Hamiltonian and Lagrangian physics within the realms of classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics variants and then about Noether’s theorem and its implications regarding symmetries. The volume of information was just too great for me to track and know it all right away, but that is because I am not good with my memory and unlike some people, I cannot do multidimensional differential equations in my head to appreciate the implications of what is being said on the web page articles about these topics. I already knew I was not a genius, but this just confirmed it. Maybe if I was younger and had a better memory, then I could slog through this stuff and come out unscathed on the other side of it and proceed to examine Richard Feynman's contributions next.

[@PasiFourmyle]

I really like that idea of importance hierarchy. That was a nice takeaway for me.

[@elmersbalm5219]

@18:00 depends on the pecking order you’re in. Those on lower rungs have to appease the egos of those above.

[@Diced92]

Iregulary forget things, but I'll suddenly remember it all again if I'm stumbling into the context again

[@NihongoWakannai]

"just be mature" great advice from prime here. "lol just get 10 years of extra life experience and how to fight addictions" Gen Z has grown up with a lot of anxiety and very easily distracted brains. It's a good step to try and reduce distractions in the process of learning how to overcome this.

[@YaroslavFedevych]

Remember, kids, you should be writing clean code, not Clean Code. There is a difference. Now get off my lawn.

[@Nerdimo]

I don’t think you’re wrong prime that people should have better self-control and mental focus, but saying it’s easy for others to behave like you is BS. Playing the victim towards the end about your own struggles doesn’t justify your claims at all either.

[@gjermundification]

11:41 It's not about short term memory, it's about workflow and process. If we define normal people as people with associative minds( people seeing a bird and thinking of flight, ) a distraction is like a dissociative trip( yet suddenly flight is no longer on the table, however a set of broken hammers is the natural progression of the sighting of the bird. )\ To a train of thought there is a full procedure: There is a boot procedure *1, there is a reload all the right parameters in the right order procedure *2, and then there is the doer potential *3. 1) If somebody entered the room smelling of cigarettes will the boot procedure be possible at all? 2) Will these parameters load in the right order if your boss had a rant on the state of the company during this break? 3) Are the prerequisits met?

[@gjermundification]

9:32 I once read in a book that a task( train of thought ) that is interrupted causes 7 times the amount of time it would take to complete the task while in the zone, compare not having been interrupted. The length of the interruption does not matter, the derail itself does. I would really like to find this book again, it must have said a lot more on this topic.

[@dirkbester9050]

Sometimes you can settle for at least using readable variable names in some horrific code so it is readable and faster to go through by the next person. Or simplify awkward if else structures and just comment the gotchas and unobvious code bits.

[@dandogamer]

Why are you using non readable variable names?

[@gabriell.1437]

@@dandogamerright? Could be Matlab dev

[@heartless09094]

there are a million clips that teach you how to go from 0 to 20.you are the first that pushes you to be your best.

[@Gunzy83]

The cd guy said including evenings and weekends, this is the opposite of what i aim for. During work hours is when things go out, period.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

crazy. i would never release on weekends unless its a "requirement"

[@samhughes1747]

The inspirational music is inspiring KZbin to ignore that it's huge blocks of other people's content.

[@areufreal]

You know, I had this take on writing in 3rd grade, that you should try not to draft anything. Drafts are bad. It makes your writing more concise and clean because you don't try to go ahead of yourself until you know you're ready to move on.

[@assassinduke1]

Probably everyone under the sun got their argument in but i have mine so here goes: Notifications hurt you because their are a multi stimulus event, they have a sound, your phone vibrates and maybe you have a flashing light, if you have all of those on its impossible to not get distracted. Combine that with work environments where there are 20 groups and everyone keeps spamming messages everywhere and you have a very unproductive day.

[@gemmaatroxxibox5322]

Lack of focus is not synonymous with remembering what you were doing. It's the ability to remain focused without wandering thoughts when you're fully absorbed back into what you're doing. That's my understanding - and I can attest to that.

[@heck-r]

"Does one 15 minute break makes you forget everything?" Well no, but when it's just a "very quick question which will take about 2 minutes", and then it (without exception) results in you getting into their context to properly understand their question and give a meaningful answer, sometimes even join a bit of debugging (because sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can spot an issue in 10 minutes, saving 3 hours of debugging), which then means you just get distracted for a 10 to 60 minute range with a complete context switch repeated endlessly throughout the day after every 15 to 30 minutes of your own work... I'd say it's more about never being able to actually get into it, and have something meaningful to forget in the first place Sure this is not the base statement, but in my experience this is the reality of that theoretical question. (At the end of the day it is of course you who has to draw the line, and find the balance between being a helpful coworker and an efficient one)

[@thatmg]

9:47 Prime trying hard not to say that dude is "intellectually disadvantaged".

[@vkkv1401]

The problem is that people are getting used to being blated with information and lured in by something new. If you train it, you can resist, but generaly it's very hard. BTW, Prime is right, cuz he dropped his addictions, so he's probably winning this argument

[@powderypastor1242]

I'm fighting one of the same addictions as Prime did (the worst one), and I can confirm that it does make you mature well and train your willpower. And then you realize how polluted with distractions, information and trends the world is. Once you understand where Prime comes from, you understand that he really is right here.

[@BLRMalcolm]

If you can't resist to check a simple phone notification you have a bigger problem than just being distracted.

[@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies]

You can say that, but someone could respond by saying the person that never got addicted, in the first place, is the one who better understands their own willpower... Nobodies winning a subjective argument...

[@meltygear5955]

For every people who beaten his addictions there are people who didn't. It's insane to assume that people fail to beat their addictions due to some internal weakness due to the fact that people experience the subjective urges and wants differently depending on their biological makeup, not "sOuL". Example: I stopped smoking cold turkey, but I will never go around telling "just don't smoke bro 4Head" that's ignorant. All nuance is lost to oversimplify things in a "just reach for the switch and turn it off, I did so everyone can". People are way too complicated to have switches.

[@BLRMalcolm]

@@meltygear5955 we are talking about being distracted and you suddenly relate it with a drug addiction and equalize it... If you think that people who's addicted to media and mobiles don't need to grow up we are not in the same path. Also, growing up, isn't only to grow in statute but mature and confront your problems and try to solve your life to have a better and happier life

[@criticalthinker88gis13]

As a junior developer at my first job i can remeber when i really struggled to understand the code base, it was like a mental overload, and interruptions used to make me forget my train of thought which was very taxing mentally, combined with being rusty after taking a three months break from coding between graduating and getting a job it made everything even worse. I think its easy to forget how it was being new ill probably do the same but my point is this really depends on the circumstances

[@HalfMonty11]

jeez, my sides... XD you are talking about maturity and overcoming addiction and kudos man, well done, that is genuinely impressive... and then I see someone in the chat say "you smoked pornography?" and my side take off into orbit because I'm a child.

[@edwingoddard4335]

Characterisation tests are black box tests in the given a set of inputs here's the output. If you make changes to the codes and you get the same outputs for a given set of inputs the test passes. You don't have to understand the behaviour. You can use them as a safety net to make sure you don't change the behaviour of the code when you refactor it

[@JanVerny]

You can't write a blackbox test when you don't know all the specific cases that can happen in that code. If you can write a test for a code you don't understand, you could probably just safely refactor it without that test.

[@edwingoddard4335]

@@JanVerny you absolutely can if you use code coverage tools to make sure you are exercising all branches with different inputs

[@daltonyon]

To me, the problem with interruptions is that i have so many that I don't finish what I'm doing in the time that I'm planning!! This cause a lot of stress until you don't care more about time. I ignore most of not prioritize notifications. If you don't do that, you'll waste the days answering what people don't search

[@strappedwithkrylon]

The focus part is just about getting into the same zone that you were in before you were interrupted, it has nothing to do with forgetting what you did - just about finding your pace or stride again. Apparently people who are interrupted tend to work faster with more stress and frustration after being interrupted, as a means to try and make up for the missed productivity, which also leads to more errors. That is iirc, it was quite a few years ago that I read the study which I believe was from Uni of California.

[@LuisMarvalPerez]

Interruptions can take a lot time of your time. Some tasks require you to enter in the 'zone', and that can takes up to an hour depending on the case. Any distraction takes you out and you have to star over again.

[@erics2133]

Back when I was at my most productive, if someone interrupted me while I was programming, it would take me a few seconds to shift out of code think and back into speaking a human language. After the shift, I'd replay the sounds I heard in my mind and only then understand what the interruption was about. My wife said she could see it happening on my face. Now, that's not saying that that was a good state of mind for programming, just that it worked for me. More normal people might not have needed that big of a shift.

[@kuhluhOG]

16:30 Well, there are also the types of bosses who throw a fit when you don't immediately answer. I at least managed one of my former ones either call or walk to my desk when it's urgent.

[@jfftck]

My boss wants quick responses to notifications, so we have to check every single one to see if it’s important.

[@HYRULE10]

The point about focus and forgetting is definitely a person by person skill issue. Managing your ability to swap contexts and get back to work is a skill and if you're interrupted ALL the time then you just need to get better at focusing faster. It's one thing if you're in the middle of thinking through an algorithm and then yes you have to start over, but if someone pings you and you're in the middle of writing out some code you already thought about then it shouldn't be an issue to put that aside for a minute and go back. I think a more insidious thing is if you're interupted multiple times by multiple people and now you have M issues to work through all at once and that's not a focus issue that's a priority issue. If what you're doing NEEDs focus then shut off notifications for the duration of however long it takes for you to get through it, write down your result in notes and then go back to normal. I used to send people that one XKCD comic about the dude forgetting the algorithm when they were interupted by a pointless comment about asking if I got an email or something, but that's not a focus issue, that's just communication issues and making sure people know your communication preferences. Eh.

[@kr12a2y]

There's usually a call stack in my head of several interrelated things that I'm figuring out at once to get to the actual goal, and that stack falls over like a mixed metaphor of Jenga blocks when the interruption happens. Apparently you don't have that issue. Nice!

[@minecraftermad]

Adhd task switching is very different. I live in the context. If i get distracted i forget everything previously. And when i re engage i immediately remember it all again.

[@TheKlopka]

I was on the other end of a rewrite recently. I came up with a good design for something, I implemented it, then some of the more senior devs decided my code was "messy". They rewrote it completely. at the end they had the exact same thing I did. I won a bet off it though

[@briandawley7808]

Re. that "interruption causes half an hour of loss of productivity," that drastically overlooks the benefits of occasionally stepping away from something hard, getting a refresh, and getting back into it. Sometimes you just need to sleep on it. Who hasn't woken up at 4 am with the solution to a problem they were bludgeoning their head against a brick wall for 8 hours trying to solve while awake?

[@NullPointerExpert]

I think the "Focus" thing is more about flow-state, and less about going 10-Second-Tim on the problem. Of course I still remember the context. But depending on the amount of stress the distraction causes, it can take varying amounts of time to get back into flow - up to 15 minutes. And there are certain people in my life that I swear sometimes have a timer set for every 15 minutes...

[@Rignchen]

I think it takes me 30 minutes of real interesting distraction to stop thinking about my code, like sometimes I juste leave my chair to go eat, and 40 minutes later when I comme back I can directly code as if I hadn't left Also, when I have a problem I'm struggling on, I feel like it's actually useful than to take a break and start back from 0, my brain often finds the answer faster by doing that

[@scottamolinari]

Uncle Bob doesn't say break down functions to their smallest parts. Never have, never did.

[@BrentMalice]

im fighting an addiction now, and you already got me onto linux. maybe ill try sobriety too. THANKS COACH

[@crackasaurus_rox9740]

If a momentary distraction costs 15m, then why do I wake up in the morning to solve the previous nights problem in

[@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies]

Controlling your thoughts is not a 'will' thing. It's a neurotransmitter thing. You can't 'willpower' neruotransmitters into existence. Willpower is how we act on our thoughts, not the very thoughts we have....

[@reinhardtcoetzee1769]

Phone and social media addiction is real. Notifications on phones etc. Here is a good exercise. Switch you phone off for two weeks. That is the usual time it takes to break addiction. After that you will see your dependency on that has changed but then you need the discipline not to fall back into the same thing.

[@AdamLeis]

Good talk on addiction and saying "no" on this one, Prime. Comments on freedom are super true.

[@fuzzy-02]

I understood perhaps 10% But the music and the video speed gave me 110% motivation buff

[@robgrainger5314]

When coding, distractions rarely cause me to lose much context. When debugging, it can be a totally different issue.

[@bkr_418]

Write fast, write often, don't be afraid to delete, rewrite fast again.

[@msr00001]

3:40 this is what I needed to hear.

[@susiebaka3388]

9:50 the point isnt that you already spent 1-2 hours on it, the idea is that every 25 minutes for those first 2 hours you're being interrupted for 5-15 minutes. then you have 3 meetings with 30 min downtime in between each meeting and now it's already the end of the day

[@shavais33]

re: Creating enough automated tests to be able to have enough confidence to delete code you don't understand - I think deleting code you don't understand is fine when you understand the current requirements and how to achieve them better than you understand what some programmers who came before did before in pursuit of old requirements that don't exist anymore, the details of which have been litdoted (lost in the depths of time-ed). But I'm not sure this actually has very much bearing on whether or not you should write coded tests. For many years I have held that the time when writing (and testing and debugging and documenting and maintaining...) coded tests makes sense is when your project has become large enough and critical enough that you have a dedicated QA team to write (...) them.

[@Mel-mu8ox]

9:44 If its a small task it can be like that.... but larger tasks not so much I think the whole idea comes from small task studies when I work on something, I tend to think on it for days, even after I think its complete. Would be hard to live my life if I couldn't do anything while problem solving, after all, you gotta eat, sleep and do family stuff sometimes XD

[@WTFSt0n3d]

When i get distracted i just read my last commit and changes and i am back

[@Waitwhat469]

16:25 I really struggle with this. Not because I can't ignore it, that is really easy, but my management REALLY wants me to answer emails/messages/etc. I sometime schedule PTO to clear my calendar and cancel it just so I can focus for the day.

[@Haz-Zzz]

Prime not realizing the type of people to watch his live/videos etc are a certain type of people, and they definitely love notification popups..

[@zeidrichthorene]

There is a 10 second statement at 9:23 which causes a derailment until about 14:16. The statement is that a distraction causes a disruption of about 10-15 times as long as the distraction itself, and the resulting distraction caused by that statement is actually 307 seconds long, so it's kind of off by about a factor of 2. But, you might say, Prime is reacting, this is reaction content, you're SUPPOSED to react. But the reality is that everyone reacts. I can't actually believe that after something gets his attention he immediately goes back to what he's doing, it's just not corroborated by evidence. Any live stream you I've seen with him coding, anything that triggers the attention pulls him away for some kind of aside. He's acting like the statement is that it will cause your brain to become empty and you will sit there, chin on fist, trying to recall what you were doing in the first place. But this isn't the disruption. The disruption is now you're thinking about something else, and you'll keep thinking about something else until you're done, and choose to go back. So you might think to yourself "No, that wasn't a 10 second distraction, it was a 5 minute distraction, but now that I'm finished with it, I can get right back to work" but the reality is, the kernel of that distraction WAS only a 10 second statement. And the 10 second distraction spawned the 5 minute reaction, after which, yeah, you can go back to doing what you were doing before. If that 10 second statement didn't get your attention, we would be on to the next part without the 5 minute aside.

[@zoravursingh5617]

is the original video available?

[@Muaahaa]

I'm a real big fan of throw-away prototypes. But the "throw-away" part is super essential.

[@ChrisWrightGuitar]

What in the lord is that take about email being better than messaging apps because it, like those messaging apps, is asnychronous? If you're incapable of ignoring Slack notifications, how is Outlook any better?! He doesn't think we use email enough? I dream of a world where email is finally replaced by something fit for purpose.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

facts

[@snickersanyone]

I love that the video has an entire section dedicated on how to “focus” while stupid=ass distracting epic movie music (TM) is playing the entire time 👍.

[@duncanw9901]

"Goldfish-driven development" is the funniest thing I've heard all week

[@-ciii-]

"You can't be free if you can't control yourself" Well said

[@mbfun9298]

I have to admit that Prime's reaction to interruptions and notifications hurts a little, not because of the ill will of his but because I really tried, tried even for years to overcome this and I am still very week at that, I've faced a lot of stressful situations in my life and many of those handled like a boss but interruptions and notifications break me, though ultimately I DO believe that it is a skill that can be worked on and I've seen some progress for myself but damn it is hard, this very same mind that has a an insane attention to details, as attention to ALL the details. For me interruptions are problematic because of the way I am programming most of the time and that is in my head, before working on something I like having a full mental image of that and if it is a new thing that I haven't worked on and it requires me looking a few steps forward an interruption will mess that up hard. As for the notifications it is for some reason constantly in my head and have trouble having a clear mind to focus on what I am doing. So both notifications and interruptions for me come from the same point and that is how I approach and do programming. Not to mention that I get easily distracted even in the code ( O_O shiny what does it dooo O_O) ^_^ With all that being said I don't think he is wrong at all, being a slave to your urges and triggers is not a sign of maturity, it is like Jocko says "Discipline equals freedom".

[@P4INKiller]

9:36 Yes, yes it does. I will strongly oppose anyone who states otherwise. Flow is a real thing.

[@elzabethtatcher9570]

It is really strange how Prime comments about this guy's solution before actually letting us hear the proposed solution. Let the guy speak, dammit.

[@kuhluhOG]

20:10 Solution to that: proper deployment weekends They department works on that stuff on the weekend and in exchange gets the days off during the normal week. Do this once a month so that they can also have a normal social life, and everyone is happy.

[@DryBones111]

I'm with you on the distractions. Learning to defer reacting to possible distractions is an important skill everybody should teach themselves.

[@AloisMahdal]

To me the interruptions are especially risky if they happen just after I've realized something that made me change how I think about the code and I already started to adapt the code to it. The thing is sometimes after the interruption I will get back but *before* that realization, and sort of move on in the previous direction, which is a recipe for a minor disaster.

[@Chow2323]

You are the dad we all need

[@meetarthur9427]

2:55 It seems that people who infinitely divide function, mostly relay on "go to definition" feature the IDE provide them. I have this impression. And I start thinking that RoR stands for Ruby on Refactor 😂. 7:08 omg so true 😂

[@zerofirex12]

16:40 - I feel like Prime might not be realizing that not everyone will have that level of agency. For one reason or another, the higher echelons of a person's company may make it so that not paying attention to whenever you're notified of something is a detriment to you. My father used to work in networking and was on call quite often, and the way he described it, he really couldn't just not pay attention to his notifications, even if he never got notified of anything during that entire day. I say all this to say, basically, for some people this sort of agency may not possible in the company they work in.

[@Nurdoidz]

Give Prime some credit. I think he does realize, but the advice is still good. The people it doesn't apply to will know, and have good reasons, like your father. The problem I have with "not everyone" takes is that it generally leads to a culture of caveats and indirect speech. It's bad-faith. A good faith response would be assuming Prime is reasonable and someone who understands that his advice isn’t absolute. I get disagreeing with someone. But good disagreements don't start off with "Hey, your statement lacked nuance and doesn't cover all scenarios. So, you must think this applies to everyone in all scenarios."

[@CamembertDave]

@@Nurdoidz I really don't think their comment warrants this level of defensiveness.

[@Nurdoidz]

@@CamembertDave Huh. Got me there.

[@zerofirex12]

@@Nurdoidz I agree with your point, my main problem with this particular section of the video was that the way he stated his opinion didn't really leave much room for interpreting in the way that you've described. He threw a pretty blanket statement out there and I felt the need to add a little nuance to it. As for your statement: "I get disagreeing with someone. But good disagreements don't start off with "Hey, your statement lacked nuance and doesn't cover all scenarios. So, you must think this applies to everyone in all scenarios."" I don't disagree with what he said, What I disagree with, is his way of saying it because the way he stated his opinion implied that everyone should practice that level of agency. I simply stated that that is not always possible and if I might be a little more forceful in my opinion, it might do some serious detriment to whoever listens to Prime and blindly respects this opinion without being more aware of their own situation in their own careers. But honestly, this was never that serious to begin with, He was a little extreme with his statement and I wanted to add a little nuance to it. Simple as that.

[@monkishrex]

It's not so much about saying no as much as it is about recognizing what's more important and hyperfocusing on that -- then you say no as a side-effect

[@ancusEIRL]

Brains are precious because the are different same why psychology won't ever be a science. I am betting that thinking magement has to do with their personalities and won't ever be able to change.

[@derekmcdaniel6029]

as for forgetting context, that's going to happen working on hard problems, and is part of the process. It means you need more time to get familiar with the problem, so a brief interruption is okay. I think the real problem is distractions: something else comes along, and then you waste the rest of the day doing nothing because you don't feel motivated. Interruptions are okay, distractions are death by a thousand cuts.

[@CoderDBF]

Contrary to most C devs, I like having my int main at the top as my first function. Then I try to structure the code as linear as possible. So that it reads top-down, similar to how the machine will execute it. I guarantee that some of you reading this will have code bases that are >50% overhead and boilerplate. Keep things simple, duplication is better than abstraction in my opinion. Only abstract if things need to be abstracted, focus on the task at hand, get shit done and be pragmatic. When your code isn’t jumping all over the place it makes things easier to refactor and junior devs will have it easier to understand the flow.

[@feloniousmonkey]

the focus thing is not about what you forget lol..its about getting back into a state of focus...for me anyways

[@SmirkInvestigator]

lol, the edgecases at 75% refactoring. Its like becoming your parents. Coders don’t talk about their code with eachother enough. I’ve worked at places where no one discussed merge conflicts, they just overwrote with their change and moved on.

[@helleye311]

I feel like the reason behind this full on TDD mentality is the same as behind MVC and other weird patterns. They're patterns. You don't think, you just do the pattern. And if you can actually think, you look at it and say "wait a minute, I could do it way better and way faster if I did this and that". It's safer to have ugly verbose complicated patterns that anyone can follow. But it's bad to force them on those who don't need them.

[@kasper_573]

Sure, maturity is a good answer to a lot of problems, possibly even most, as you say. But what is maturity? Growth. And How do you grow? Through experience, failure, support, reflection, and most importantly time. It’s a lot of work, and the path is not linear, and it’s often obfuscated. Telling people to ”just be mature” may fundamentally be a reasonable solution, but without proper context it’s really poor advice, since most people will just interpret you as trivializing their issues and all you achieve is sounding like a jerk.

[@Klayperson]

I agree that "just be mature" is impossible to follow the way some kind of step-by-step framework would be, but I also think that "just be mature" is an important thing to be spoken: it foists an arguably appropriate amount of shame upon those whose immaturity obstructs their own eudaimonia. One of the most motivating factors of human behavior is actually not the pursuit of well-being, but the avoidance of discomfort. It's therefore socially good to frame fixable immaturity into a socially discomfortable way of being. There are plenty of other resources on *how* to fix it, but since the motivation to actually do so doesn't always come intrinsically, extrinsic motivators-like being told "just be mature" by admirable people-can come into play.

[@WildfireS1]

Me yelling at the screen as if I’m in the livestream.

[@ShadoFXPerino]

The "Efficiency" part is not having to rewrite the whole program again after first building a prototype, and not repeatedly re-implementing the same messy code due to edge cases.

[@maciejglinski6564]

the video we are watching i such a boomer cringefest i will die any minute. Never felt such a spiritual awakening while watching a clean code video, i feel the mindfulness pouring out of all the crevices

[@CEOofGameDev]

"What you really need is a dose of maturity" - Prime "Deez nuts" Agen .

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

yes