Variable Lucidity

Ok, to say that things have been a wee bit busy is an understatement of such magnitude that I can't describe. Given that the things I write about either require quite a bit of research, for which I had no time, or are inspired by the day-to-day activities at my clients', which, for the last couple of months, would have been inappropriate subject matter, there has been little about which I could write. However, there were a couple of little items that popped up, so as I spend a few minutes trying to figure out how to short out my neighbor's stereo, I'll take the opportunity to mention one.

There is a tendency among programmers to plan the code to implement a particular piece of functionality in their heads. Breakdown of functions, little features to implement, peculiarities that will need to be accounted for, etc.

The difficulty is that your mind tends not to have the same level of lucidity day to day. To compensate for this, I like to put little one-liner comments in the function stubs as I think of the details.

It was not until a conversation with a friend a few weeks back that I realized that most programmers don't do this. I think this is one reason programmers prefer to work long hours once they have the idea in their heads ... to keep the level of mental function that they had when designing on through the coding.

There's this thing called "a life" that I've been trying to acquire for some decades. I've found it very difficult to do so when I have to work long hours to keep a design in my head. A few little comments while designing, and "life" becomes more pleasant.