Why do developers fight over code style?
We are creatures of habits. We like when our code looks like we would expect it to look and not some completely different style. When the style is too different, then it creates cognitive load, which means that we're spending more energy than we would if the code looked the way we like it. Since we're machines that attempt to minimize the amount of energy we spend, we see code that is not styled our way as a bad investment of our energy and that it would either be better to reformat the code our way (minimizing our energy expenditure in the future) or simply to start from scratch.
As human beings, we're able to adapt. Adapting generally requires more energy than simply using the skills we already have, and we prefer to avoid having to adapt. Thus we fight with others so that they do the effort of adapting instead of us. We see fighting as being more effective than adapting. It may be an effective approach when no existing rules exist, however, in many businesses, code standards have been established, which means that if you are a new employee, you will have to adapt to those standards. You could always try to bring back the discussion of updating the code style, but if the standards have been established a long time ago, this effort is likely to be futile.
As such, even though adapting requires more of our energy, we should make that sacrifice upfront and use it on more important things, such as defining what tasks are important and which ones should be done first.
If you offload everything in your head into documents, how long does it take before you start repeating yourself?
How soon you repeat yourself will depend on how much diversity there is in your thoughts. If you always think about the same problems in the same ways, you're likely to repeat yourself a lot. However, if you try to explore the same problems through different lenses you'll have less chances to repeat yourself.
If you spend most of your time exploring new ideas, then you may only come back to ideas you had in the past from time to time.
If you work in a specialized field you may have to learn the basics multiple times in order to master them. Sometimes you will have acquired new knowledge that might challenge your existing assumptions. You will be mostly repeating yourself, but you will be making small adjustments at the same time.
When we offload everything that we have in our head into documents, our goal is to have more working memory space for our current work. We want to avoid having to come back to the same topics and having to start our exploration from scratch.
When we're exploring, we want to avoid exploring the same topics without noticing. As we explore a field, we may get a sense that the field is very large and that it may take a long time to get familiar with it. By mapping the field we can get a better sense of its size while at the same time discovering the important concepts. This lets us identify when we are making use of the same concepts over and over again.
Should we let employees from corrupted companies apply to other companies?
I am of the opinion that it is better for corruption not to spread.
I'd hope that by having the (potentially) corrupted individuals join other companies, that the culture of the companies they join would prevent them from corrupting those companies. Either the corrupted individuals would have to stop being corruptors (in the future, which would be ideal), or be evicted out of the "healthy" company in order to avoid fostering this behavior.
One issue with corrupted employees spreading to other companies is that it is difficult to identify them as they work in those various companies. It is possible for us to establish a blacklist of companies that exhibited bad behaviors and avoiding employing people who worked there. This approach may however punish employees that are not corrupted. As larger and larger companies exhibit behaviors that might put them on this blacklist, the number of individuals ending up on that list may be too large, reducing the pool of candidates too greatly.
What companies and individuals within healthy companies need is a way to identify individuals that are likely to be corrupted or corruptible. The difficulty is however that those individuals are likely to be cunning, which means that no single technique will always succeed at identifying them.
How do I track my thoughts?
When I am on the go, I mostly rely on Google Keep to write down what on my mind. I use it because it loads fast, is straightforward and allows me to quickly dump my thought and go back to what I was doing. Since I'm always with my phone, it's always within reach. It also will synchronize with Google when I'm online so it is available on any other devices. This also means that I may sometimes record things either directly from my computer, my work computer, my phone or my tablet, depending on the medium I'm using at the time (defaulting to my phone if I'm not using any device when the thought crops up).
When I am at home, I've devised a simple system in Visual Studio Code where I use two keyboard shortcut, one that open today's buffer (CTRLNumpad 2) and one that inserts a datetime and note id on the current line (CTRLNumpad 0).
When I am at work, I use this same system to take notes pertaining my work. I generally try to organize my thoughts per projects so that I can go back to any specific project and re-read the notes to get back in context. I also will write down notes related to issues I'm working on and identify them using the issue ID given by JIRA.
In both cases (at home and at work), I also have configured Visual Studio Code to commit automatically to git changes that are done in markdown files when the editor focus changes. This allows me to have a somewhat granular log of the changes that happen to my note files. At work, I have configured a cronjob that automatically pushes the notes to my private git repository. This allows me to pull those notes at home and read them whenever I want. I also push my personal notes to my private git repository, but I do not pull them on my work computer because I haven't had the need for it.
Questions to think about a problem differently
History / Edit / PDF / EPUB / BIB / 2 min read (~380 words)What simple questions can be used to think about a problem differently?
I've learned to solve problems by thinking about what I already knew. I would try to think of parts of the solution that might make sense and I would piece those parts together to get from the problem to the solution.
While I was doing some hobbyist research on AGI, I read George Pólya classic "How to Solve It". Pólya covers many of the questions I would ask myself implicitly, so I was glad to see that someone had taken the time to write them in a reusable format.
His four steps of 1. understanding the problem, 2. devising a plan, 3. carrying out the plan and 4. looking back will lead you to ask yourself what you know and don't know about the problem you are trying to solve. Doing so is similar to Feynman's technique, where you attempt to teach what you know to someone else and by doing so, are discovering the parts of your explanation that needs improvement.
What I liked the most about Pólya's approach was that he was comfortable working with partial solutions. If you couldn't figure out how to get to the end, it was still important to put forward all the tools you had at your disposition in order to attempt to solve the problem. This way you would be able to get an idea of what was lacking in your solution.
- What is not known yet?
- What data do you have?
- What conditions are there?
- Is it possible to satisfy all those conditions?
- Have you seen this problem before?
- Have you seen a similar problem in a slightly different form?
- Do you know any related problems?
- Do you know something that could be useful to solve this problem?
- If you cannot solve this problem yet, can you solve a related problem?
- Can you see clearly the steps from beginning to end?
- Can you prove that your approach is correct?
- Can you check your solution?
- Can you get to your solution differently?
- Can you use your solution to solve other problems?