Finding a Personal Coding Trifecta

jammag writes "For Seinfeld's George Constanza, his dream of the ideal moment was having sex while watching TV and eating a pastrami sandwich. He called this Nirvana state 'The Trifecta.' Developer Eric Spiegel adapts this concept of Nirvana to the act of writing your best possible code. He examines all (or most) of the possible things that might contribute to the 'The Trifecta' for developers — food, beverages, time of day. Spiegel also describes his personal Trifecta."

Comments

Re:my trifecta

[choongiri]

I have mod points, but instead of modding this post funny I'd rather point out that it's actually about 10x more intelligent than the article. How did this garbage get on the front page?

hmm

[greywire]

while the article is lame, the subject is not.

More important than what you need to get into your zone (because I think we all know how this works for our own needs), is how do you explain this to others who do not understand "the zone"?

The hardest part for me is getting others to respect my zone. They just don't understand. For kids, you can't really blame them. You just have to stay out of sight and out of mind. But for the adults, they often just don't get it.

The biggest "zone breakers" are interruptions of any kind or duration. Having to stop for even one minute to take a call or acknowledge a communication can break your flow completely and it can take time to get back into gear. I think there have even been studies showing it takes some 15 minutes average to get back.

And of course this applies to anyone doing something highly creative or thoughtful.

Re:hmm

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

The biggest "zone breakers" are interruptions of any kind or duration. Having to stop for even one minute to take a call or acknowledge a communication can break your flow completely and it can take time to get back into gear. I think there have even been studies showing it takes some 15 minutes average to get back.

That's one reason I hate working in a busy office environment: most workplaces seem to encourage people to interrupt each other. There's always a meeting, or a phone call, somebody wanting your attention, or some "emergency" knocking you out of a state in which you can make any progress.

It seems to me that it's a lot easier to get difficult things done at home where I can unplug the phone and internet connection and just work. It's better for others, too--if a good random idea pops into my head, it can sit in my outgoing mailbox queue instead of egging me on to walk over to someone's office/cubicle and interrupting their work.

simple

[speedtux]

A few days of a free schedule, no interruptions, and a private, quiet workspace will do the trick for me.

What's the one thing I need to code?

[composer777]

Go away...
No, seriously, just go away...

Re:Some folks don't need a zone

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

If somebody can do their best work at the drop of a hat, no matter how they feel, I'd venture a guess that their best isn't very good.