Programming Warm Ups?

ResHippie asks: "No athlete or musician would think about just diving in to the day's activity without doing some series of warm ups first. Aside from starting most computing sessions with checking email and the like, I pretty much try to dive right in to the task at hand. It usually takes me a while to get going, though. Does anyone have any routines they go through before coding (or any other work-like activity) that helps?"

Comments

The usual

[adamy]

Drink Coffee
Read Email
Read Slashdot

Actually, the best way I've found to get into the zone is to leave a compiltation error from the previous day. It is the mental equivalent of a stack pointer from which you can pop all of your registers, reinitialize the idle process, and start cranking.

example //Working here, trying to get the right objects from iterator
BadObject b = iterator.next();

Yes, I work in Java. Compiler will shout about bad object types, and I'm off.

Exercise

[LadyLucky]

OK, so maybe I'm lucky and I have a work subsidized gym membership at the gym which is on the otherside of the carpark, but I find there's nothing quite like a bit of exercise (swimming is my cardio of choice) to get the blood pumping, gives you some alone time in the zone to toss around those ideas for sexy code.

That, or coffee.