I'd rather be at Work.
Oct. 3rd, 2008 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupIt probably goes without saying that I'd rather be well, but its not often that I find myself actually preferring to be at work rather than at home.
But, there's not really much for me to do here, especially considering how I'm feeling. As well, I've reached a point at work where what I am doing is getting quite interesting. It is, however, also getting quite tricky and I need a working brain to make any forward progress there.
Now, I know of studies that have put Systems Programming in the same category as Brain Surgery and Rocket Science for the intellectual difficulty of the work, but like (I imagine) all intellectual endevours, most of programming work does not require anywhere near the same level of brain power as the hardest bits. In fact, there are many tasks in my field I could meaningfully do at my current diminished level of brain power; some could be done by a trained monkey. Alas, no such tasks are currently on my to-do list.
Right now I'm working on two things, and each has stalled on a bit that requires a careful redesign. Nothing terribly elaborate or difficult, but certainly beyond the intellectual demands of repetitive coding of yet another do-loop to traverse a list. What's more, the thing about designs is that when you get one wrong you make extra work for yourself. So, any attempt to work in my current condition will just create a bunch of broken stuff that I'll have to go back and fix later.
Of course, once the redesigns are done, then the code must be modified to reflect the new designs and 90% of that will be trained monkey work. So, this cold was just bad timing all around.
But, there's not really much for me to do here, especially considering how I'm feeling. As well, I've reached a point at work where what I am doing is getting quite interesting. It is, however, also getting quite tricky and I need a working brain to make any forward progress there.
Now, I know of studies that have put Systems Programming in the same category as Brain Surgery and Rocket Science for the intellectual difficulty of the work, but like (I imagine) all intellectual endevours, most of programming work does not require anywhere near the same level of brain power as the hardest bits. In fact, there are many tasks in my field I could meaningfully do at my current diminished level of brain power; some could be done by a trained monkey. Alas, no such tasks are currently on my to-do list.
Right now I'm working on two things, and each has stalled on a bit that requires a careful redesign. Nothing terribly elaborate or difficult, but certainly beyond the intellectual demands of repetitive coding of yet another do-loop to traverse a list. What's more, the thing about designs is that when you get one wrong you make extra work for yourself. So, any attempt to work in my current condition will just create a bunch of broken stuff that I'll have to go back and fix later.
Of course, once the redesigns are done, then the code must be modified to reflect the new designs and 90% of that will be trained monkey work. So, this cold was just bad timing all around.
