NinLabs is a research-minded software engineering blog by Michael Hilton's colleagues, covering programmer interruptions, API documentation and the future of software engineering.
HN commenters link its Programmer Interrupted post as an in-depth study of how interruptions hurt programming, and note it reads better than reposts.
We've been researching at what resources developers actually use when browsing the web. The [initial results](http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/03/api-documentation/) of Android developers confirm Stack Overflow is highly consulted, often over official documentation. We're seeing the same with data collected from [web developers](http://checkbox.io/studies/?id=51fac5175ec6012222000001).
Costs need to think in terms of the entire ecosystem: the time spent creating the answers, the time spent writing official documentation that isn't consulted, and the time saved finding the answer faster.
Many technical writers and documentation teams from large corporations have been reaching out to me on this topic, they are definitely interested in learning how to adapt their processes based on Stack Overflow's success.
But not everything is roses. Providing answers can be [slow](http://blog.ninlabs.com/2012/05/crowd-documentation/), unanswered questions are rising, and [users stop doing actions](http://research.cs.queensu.ca/~scott/papers/MSR2013.pdf) that lead to badges as soon as they achieve them. On recent field study at a large industrial company, when learning WPF, they relied on books, and internal seminars to learn new concepts because Stack Overflow at the time did not have sufficient saturation on examples yet. As seen with [another study](http://blog.leif.me/2013/11/how-software-developers-use-twitter/) on twitter usage, in some contexts, the subject matter and available of…
If you don't have access to meditation center book "Mindfulness in plain english" seems like not newagey introduction to the subject.
It describes Vipassana. It's almost like Zazen, but slightly different. In my understanding Zazen is Mahayana buddhism version of Vipassana, which comes from Theravada buddhism, but I am just a begginer so I can be horribly wrong.
I started meditating recently after reading MIPE. I'll try to find a teacher as soon as I can.
What got hooked me up was some research that it improves cognitive performance: http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf .
There's some evidence that long term meditation changes structure of the brain and improves mood and attention outside of meditation practice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#Changes_in_brain_due_to_prolonged_practice_of_meditation .
This post seems like good encouragement as well: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is-practicing-meditation-a-good-or-bad-thing-for-programmers .
One thing which I notice the most is increased ability to deal with distractions and staying focused on boring subjects . It is essentially what one practices during meditation. Dealing with distractions is very important skill for programmer: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/ . What's more it's kind of skill, that is hard to develop without active practice. I can't think of better way of developing it than meditation.
You are correct. 6 hours including the breaks.
I am an employee at a large distribution company for IT hard and software. I think there are many factors that play into how long a productive day really is:
Type of work - is your job requiring brainwork all the time or maybe you have some work in-between that just requires execution prime to thinking work?
Environment - how good are you shielded from distractions?
Communication - do you really need to be shielded? Maybe you need a steady communication to proceed with your work. I'm thinking about the guys at stock market e.g.
Type of breaks - This is a big one and up to personal preference to a degree. Are you forced to take a break? Is it a hard force or a soft force (telephone vs. mail).
Do you have to respond immediately? A big problem for me e.g. is interruptions when i'm in the middle of it. It takes a fair amount of time to get back into the zone.
If this happens i often like to refer to this article: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/
It's hard for people to understand why interruptions can be very harmful for work.
So if i say 6 hours, this is the maximum for me to work concentrated on one topic. Interruptions diminish this number, shorten my concentration timespan and often make the day not as productive (subjectively).
edit: formatting
Some specific resources for the interested:
- Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (Green 1989) http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.128.270&rep=rep1&type=pdf
- Programmers Are Users Too: Human-Centered Methods for Improving Programming Tools (Myers et al. 2016) http://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/papers/Myers2016ProgrammersAreUsers.pdf
- Programmer Interrupted (Parnin 2013) http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/
- Empirical analysis of programming language adoption (Meyerovich and Rabkin 2013) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2509515
- Learnable Programming (Victor 2012) http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/
- Usability of Programming Languages working group at CHI'16 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GUt5oVPpi7rlObbU1WbA5V1OQBX1iaghryLJ6-ND9o/
> Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing a more natural and conversational reply
It's not that simple.
If I'm in the middle of a coding binge I can switch over and fire off a 'VSRE' without losing place. Converting that into a 'sociable' reply requires a mental context switch out of coding land and into human land. That doesn't cost me 2 minutes, It costs me half an hour [0]. So either the e-mail gets a terse response, or the sender waits a couple hours till I hit a mental break point in what I'm doing.
[0] http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/
> how can you experiment with learning on-the-job to create systems where the thinking is optimized?
Best optimization is less interruptions as reasearch shows their devastating effect on programming:
- 10-15 min to resume work after an interruption
- A programmer is likely to get just one uninterrupted 2-hour session in a day
- Worst time to interrupt: during edits, searches & comprehension
I've been wondering if there's a way to track interruptions to showcase this.
[0] http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/