Overcoming coder's block

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2007/01/01/overcoming-coder-block.html

by kesun421 • 16 years ago

8 4 16 years ago

Cory Doctorow has a saying for his writing students: "Surgeons don't get surgeon's block."

I think the point is that the idea of professional block is just a fancy name for procrastination. However, I don't think he did any actual research with surgeons, so I can't say whether they procrastinate or not.

iends• 16 years ago

Surgery is not a creative process, at least, most surgeries shouldn't be. Instead, surgeries should be performed by somebody who learned about the procedure in medical school, and then performed it multiple times.

At least, any surgeon I'm paying...

gruseom• 16 years ago

A well known poet (I forget who) taught creative writing for years at a small Midwestern college (I forget which). His rule was that his students had to write a poem a day. One day a student said, "Professor X, I'm trying to follow your rule, I sit down to write, but I just don't get any inspiration. Do you have any advice for me?" His reply: "Lower your standards."

patio11• 16 years ago

You know how a diabetic needs to keep a quick source of accessible sugar? I keep a quick source of accessible wins: my "to be implemented on a rainy day" A/B testing notebook. If I feel like programming and have programming scheduled but just can't get started for whatever reason, I pop one of those little candies of coding goodness to grease the wheels. At the very least they'll force me to get my IDE open, fire up a test suite, bang up some code, etc etc. After one is done I often feel that, since I'm already programming, I might as well go on to do whatever I really planned to do today.

There are days when I just can't program. We've all had that day, right? If I'm in mental shape to do other work, I do other work. If not, I shut down the machine and go out. (I can't wait until this doesn't require apologizing to my coworkers for taking the day off.)

Overcoming coder's block

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