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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

Some of the most productive programmers I've known toss code together in a horrifying slapdash fashion but somehow get great things done. And sometimes people with far more precise and mathematical minds just get mired in their beautiful architectures. The common trait I've seen in all exceptional programmers is an ability to keep a tremendous number of details in memory at one time. Most real world code is not lambda calculus but a barely controlled mess.

Humanizing technology is a bigger win than technologizing humans, IMO.

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"Most real world code is not lambda calculus but a barely controlled mess."

Beautifully put.

  The common trait I've seen in all exceptional programmers is an ability to 
  keep a tremendous number of details in memory at one time

Would you care to elaborate on this? I'm a programmer with 'precise and mathematical mind' and I'd say that my one big weakness is exactly that: I struggle to large numbers of disconnected facts in my head at one time.

Most programming tasks involve reconciling a bunch of competing constraints. Abstraction techniques make it easier to deal with subsets of those constraints but abstractions leak and even well abstracted software still involves the interactions of many small pieces. This is why it takes 20-30 minutes to get your head into a programming problem - you have to pull enough of that problem space into your head to start manipulating it.

The best programmers can get into that space faster and pull a bigger chunk of a system into their heads at one time. This is why they don't necessarily write clean code because they don't have to. The less gifted of us need strong abstractions and code discipline or we just can't keep up. This is why somebody like Linus Torvalds can afford to be disdainful of a lot of common practices in software - he doesn't need the extra help those practices provide.

And all this happens well above the level of a strong mathematical formalism.

I'm not sure if that's quantifiable, or if it's a common trait. I'd say you either need that, or be really good at coming up with thought-efficient abstractions. The other way to put it is: you need to have great focus/concentration.

An interesting excerpt from Accidental Empires (a great read) where this is discussed in passing: http://books.google.com/books?id=QMrfJ-OVIp4C&lpg=PA321&...

Same here - the best could just read APIs and start using them, while I was always referring back to them.

I've started meditation again; dual n-backed games are next to try and improve my working memory and concentration. Also, just regularly re-reading the core APIs I'm working with.

On the usefulness of N-back (scroll to heading "Notes from the author"):

http://gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ

thank you, i have a new motto.

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