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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

So like...writing an essay in class. That could be useful, although they won't be able to do any research or anything.

The best class I had in high school (Mr. Hecker’s English class), required writing an essay in class every week. All my college essays were easy by comparison.

I’m a big proponent of doing difficult things regularly.

If we habitually do hard things, then we generally have no problem, stepping up to the plate, for when it’s showtime.

Same reason that musicians practice scales, all the time.

I write code, every day. I walk 5K, every day. I solve problems, every day (detect a pattern, here?). It makes showtime a lot less stressful, and folks seem happy with my work.

I'm really curious what your schedule looks like

5AM-9PM weekdays, 5:30AM-10PM on weekends.

First thing I do, is a 5K brisk walk. Gets the exercise quota satisfied. I tried running, but kept injuring myself, so walking, it is. I can do that, seven days a week. Takes a bit less than an hour (I walk about 10min/Km).

I usually "triage" my day, on these walks. I mentally sort through the tasks ahead, and scope out my plans. Sometimes, it's straightforward, other times, I have to develop a plan.

When I get home, I hit the shower, and generally start coding, right away. I code throughout the day, taking breaks as I need/want. I have no issue, stopping work for a couple of hours, and watching some TV or even taking a short nap.

I'll code at any time. I don't have a "set" workday.

I have found that I am most productive in the morning, and most creative at night, but I sometimes find myself losing focus, towards the end of the day. When that happens, I generally wrap things up, as I do more damage than good. I'll often fix a bug in my head during my walk, that was confounding me the night before.

I believe in F^3 - Finite, Focused, and Finished.

- Finite: I know what "done" looks like. Tasks have a discrete beginning and end, though the schedule may be fuzzy.

- Focused: No distractions. I stay on beam, and devote full attention to the task at hand.

- Finished: I don't stop, until I have reached a point that I can wrap things. I usually punctuate this with a final tagged commit.

It's also important to scope things reasonably. Stretch, but not too much.

I write about that stuff here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...

I probably have a life a lot of folks around here would not find attractive. I find it WFM. YMMV.

Train hard, fight easy

To each their own. I didn’t really learn how to write until in grad school, when I had things I really wanted to write about. I can imagine how much joy would have been sucked out of writing if I just had to write some essay every week that I didn’t have much interest in.

I don’t enjoy arithmetic or typing much either, but they are skills you have to learn in school so you can do things you _do_ enjoy. I think “writing an essay” is about the same.

I went to a high school when and where typing was required as a pre-requisite to programming. The only C I got in my four years of high school.

I think we make kids hate school via "sucking it up" when we really don't have to. Learning to write in the right context is much more effective than learning in the wrong context. But our educational system is so standardize that we have to fit most kids into the same interest peg.

Hah, I took a "keyboarding" course before programming was taught in my school. I typed a stretch at 60wpm. The teacher dryly remarked that I had just taken the 5wpm test and I'd need to work my way up to 60. Good times, good times...

I was just surprised we were graded on speed. Like, the girls (who...had thinner fingers on average?) would all get As by reaching 80 WPM, I'm stuck with fat fingers at 20-30 WPM (mind you, just copying text from one screen to another)...which is plenty of speed for programming and even writing comments on hacker news.

These days, that would be considered insane! But in 1989...

Take a look at Itzhak Perlman's hands[1] and listen to him play Paganini's 24 Caprices... I am positive that you could type faster if you tried. But, I agree, one does not need to be a champion speed typist to write good code. Think more, type less.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itzhak_Perlman#/media/File:Itz...

Yes, thin dexitorious finger build isn’t necessary, but at 14 would have definitely been helpful. The job they were training us for (transcription) was mostly already on the way out anyways.

Maybe, but schools don't teach essay writing, of tutorial writing, they teach an ugly form of mechanical writing.

I had a teacher like that in middle school. It was terrifying but after her class writing was never a sweat until 5-paragraph essays were no longer acceptable.

Students could print out their sources and turn them in with the essay. Of course this would require knowing ahead of time what sources you’d need.

Yes, we had this all the time in English class in high school. It would be a prompt about the book we were reading or some texts he would print out and give us then and there.

A competitive admissions high school I know requires prospective students to write the admissions essay in a set amount of time when they come to tour and interview in order to avoid parents/tutors/etc. from writing these essays, and leveling the playing field…think it’s a fantastic system

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