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The cost of interrupted work (2023)

(blog.oberien.de)
282 points _vaporwave_ | 1 comments | 23 Aug 25 21:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Waterluvian ◴[23 Aug 25 23:25 UTC] No.44999915[source]▶
Some days an interruption will throw me off my train of thought, and I spend the remaining six hours collecting discarded bottles and railway ties for hopeful use somewhere, somehow, sometime.

Other days an interruption costs me pretty much nothing.

I’m still trying to figure out how to tell which of those days I’m going to have and whether to just not log into Slack for the day.

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karmakaze ◴[24 Aug 25 01:26 UTC] No.45000493[source]▶
I've found one thing that minimizes interruption cost: pair programming. At one startup we pair programmed all day, every day. Resuming from an interruption was almost seamless. Can't explain it, only experienced it.
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SoftTalker ◴[24 Aug 25 02:00 UTC] No.45000671[source]▶
If only I wouldn’t prefer stabbing myself in the leg with a rusty knife over pair programming.
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dylan604 ◴[24 Aug 25 02:05 UTC] No.45000690[source]▶
I've never done official pair programming, but I get frustrated when I'm not on the keyboard as I find others think slower.
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1. karmakaze ◴[24 Aug 25 03:26 UTC] No.45001070{4}[source]▶
I usually prefer to be navigator than driver. It's the navigator that does the high level thinking. The one at the keyboard is the one who's usually better at typing and writing out the design patterns that are agreed upon. Of course we did swap roles routinely, maybe several times a day. Oh and to top it off we switched pairing partners every week or two. It was a brutal experiment but I learned a lot and I'd say it was a great success.