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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: 0.203s | 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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andrei_says_ ◴[24 Aug 25 15:06 UTC] No.45004772[source]▶
I’ve done pair programming for a short amount of time and found it stimulating and productive.

What specifically makes it painful for you?

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1. kelnos ◴[24 Aug 25 18:41 UTC] No.45006586[source]▶
No the person you've replied to, but for me I just find it frustrating. When I'm not the one typing, I always find the other person moving slower than I can think, not entirely getting what I want to tell them ("no, line 47, not 53 -- no, the foobar function call isn't the problem, it's the 4th argument to barbaz... no no, no that one... GAH). Maybe we can chalk this up to "communication problems", and I should have taken a pause to talk about communication with my pair partner.

I dunno. I've just always felt much less productive with someone else there. I don't view programming as a social or collaborative activity. Building software can be collaborative, but when I'm sitting down to do implementation, collaboration slows me down, and I find it very frustrating and unproductive.