Comments on C for Coding: Do Programmers Optimize... Life?

I do the exact same thing when riding my bike home...

2010-05-19T13:54:05.522+08:00

I do the exact same thing when riding my bike home from work. I also analyze if a parallell street would save me time because of less traffic etc, naturally including the extra time it takes to go the extra distance away from the closest street. Glad to hear Im not alone doing so.

I'm right there with you. In my case, I was op...

2009-07-10T21:38:33.576+08:00

I'm right there with you. In my case, I was optimizing the distribution of music files among shallow directories on my Flash storage-based music player. I described it as "algorithms everywhere": http://ripplingbrainwaves.blogspot.com/2009/01/algorithms-everywhere.html

Interesting post @Anon above me That is interest...

2009-07-08T09:06:03.587+08:00

Interesting post

@Anon above me

That is interesting about the aircraft software unable to interpret faulty readings. How would such a program recover from fauly input from faulty hardware (which I imagine) would be automated? Sound the horn?

Its OK to optimize, but NEVER forget good old comm...

2009-06-30T02:46:57.417+08:00

Its OK to optimize, but NEVER forget good old commnon sense -- as in program
testing for example.

If your beautiful coded program is fully optimized with 'state-of-the-art'
graphics layout, it is still a useless (or dangerous) program if only one bug is
not resolved.

In the old days, a simple method was used to test for bugs sometimes:

Hit the keyboard randomly, and press ENTER.

(Many programs aborted/crashed/rebooted that way)

And what comes to mind, is Flight 447 Air France, which as I understand it so
far, was brought down by software which could not process incorrect readings by
faulty hardware.

This sounds like a work for Djikstra..

2009-06-25T00:41:01.111+08:00

This sounds like a work for Djikstra..

Spending your life (8-16 hours a day depending on ...

2009-06-24T23:50:54.751+08:00

Spending your life (8-16 hours a day depending on your job) breaking situations and requirements into flows, objects, and behaviors then executing them WILL bleed into your life if you are doing it right. There's nothing wrong with you, most of us do the same thing (or at least I do). I think it makes us better members of society. I am sure a number of other professions provide the same base mindset.

Protip: Never talk to your girlfriend about it unless she is the same way. Being able to provide a flowchart of how a difficult conversation is likely to go evidently makes you an "over-analytical asshole". Drawing it out before the conversation and showing it to her after to prove a point makes it worse.

Hi, this is the first time I see this blog, but wo...

2009-06-24T19:00:40.635+08:00

Hi, this is the first time I see this blog, but would like to comment:
I think in this way you might lose or not see alot of what life has.
Do you know the story of the little prince?
there is a passage there where he can buy thirst relieving pills, so he asks what for?
and the merchant tells him that it would save him time. he then answers that if he had spare time, he'd rather use it for a nice walk to the well and a drink when he gets there.
What I mean is that when you walk you should take your time, notice the world, examine things and people, make interactions, or just smile to people. In my opinion it's more important than to have more time. it's also a kind of relaxing activity, probably contributes to your confidence and self assurance too. After all it's your life, for you, you don't get a grade for efficiency, or linearity. It's not a race...
well, just my point of view.
see you

@Anonymous June 24, 2009 11:00AM I am a Computer ...

2009-06-24T14:00:29.623+08:00

@Anonymous June 24, 2009 11:00AM

I am a Computer Scientist and I ride a bicycle everywhere. I find that I optimise my route even more than walking as I am concerned with maintaining altitude (reducing hills), reducing exposure to traffic, reducing red lights and looking for the shortest distance. My specific area of expertise is multiple objective optimisation and I find that this is a natural fit to this daily activity as I am constantly changing my routes depending on the conditions of the day (rainy, more or less traffic, dark or light).

It is a natrual consequence of the work that I do that I obsess over finding the most optimal route, and boy does it shit my wife when I suddenly peel off into a side street because I've suddenly calculated it to be closer to optimal!

I have solved your walk home problem... get a bike...

2009-06-24T11:00:27.159+08:00

I have solved your walk home problem... get a bike. Then it matters a lot less, since you don't waste as much time walking, you exercise more, and chicks love guys on bikes.

I understand what you're saying, but look at w...

2009-06-24T02:53:53.341+08:00

I understand what you're saying, but look at where programmers end up: in front of a computer deep inside a cubicle farm. Is that really optimizing for "life"?

As a software developer, I can relate to this. I ...

2009-06-24T01:17:55.714+08:00

As a software developer, I can relate to this. I even optimize my routes through the cubicle farm to the bathrooms and the various conference rooms at work. It drives less like-minded folks crazy.

Yea but dogs don't sovle the problem with calc...

2009-06-23T21:29:50.770+08:00

Yea but dogs don't sovle the problem with calculus. They have pavlovian-learned that if you walk or swim straight towards something you will get there in the shorted time (which is true on the surface of the earth over short distances, but not true, say, if you are a satellite slingshotting around a planetary body where GR becomes significant).

Physicists optimise this stuff too :)

Also, when optimising a bike journey, I have found that it's normally much quicker to just get the car-route and follow that (talking about optimising a journey in London here, which (like most major cities in europe) is distinctly non-grid-like), since you get wide fast-moving roads. This is way quicker than remembering hundreds of little twists and turns, and frequently having to get off and push through bollards, simply in order to go the smallest distance (which isn't always the fastest way, and he says :) )

I bike to work, and have done so in four different...

2009-06-23T20:27:26.576+08:00

I bike to work, and have done so in four different cities in this decade. I always try to optimize as I ride, not only which roads/bike paths to use, which includes a significant consideration of elevation change (which can be fun!), but also when to use them. "Oh, if I leave work now I'd only save 3 minutes compared to if I leave 5 minutes from now, so I'll work the extra 5 minutes and arrive 2 minutes later, due to the lift-bridge..."

optimizing: agreed, that its not exclusive to prog...

2009-06-23T19:43:24.133+08:00

optimizing: agreed, that its not exclusive to programmers/compsci

life optimizations: do you time and record everything you do to calculate the optimizations/efficiency? if you do, at what granularity/what level of obsessiveness*?

i myself, logging everything i do in life unfortunately* is central to my work/life habit

Over time, I've moved away from optimizing cod...

2009-06-23T19:26:04.256+08:00

Over time, I've moved away from optimizing code to tackling social entrepreneurship(matching work with passion is one area that needs help). There are huge bottlenecks all around us, and the most profound impact some of us can have is outside of .cpp files as entrepreneurs, and idea engines.

Adam... it's the triangle inequality you need ...

2009-06-23T18:50:43.151+08:00

Adam... it's the triangle inequality you need - the length of any side of any triangle (excluding the limiting case where the triangle is squashed down into a straight line) is shorter than the sum of the lengths of the other two sides.
the longer side.

I think the old school Jesuits like Isaac Jorges o...

2009-06-23T17:32:47.117+08:00

I think the old school Jesuits like Isaac Jorges optimized life

When your friend commented: 'How...sad', h...

2009-06-23T15:43:29.910+08:00

When your friend commented: 'How...sad', he wasn't correct. But I know what he meant. The problem is that you see the world in terms of exactly one variable: Efficiency. Instead, you could try for a whole panoply of variables: Beauty, Novelty, Human Encounters, any of the infinite number of human values that we all (even programmers) hold.

Or you could try doing a bit of what social scientists call 'satisficing', 'Satisficing (a portmanteau of "satisfy" and "suffice") is a decision-making strategy which attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near) optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete information, are considered in the outcome calculus.'

But your story implied that once you went through you optimization procedure, you left the problem as completely solved. A real programmer would have examined it again and again, solving it differently each time. Your friend thought it was sad that you used your brain in only one way, and could not see the beauty, or possibility of human encounter, in your walking trip. I think you are just a lousy programmer. How....sad.

Douglas Coupland briefly mentions this in his book...

2009-06-23T13:58:53.510+08:00

Douglas Coupland briefly mentions this in his book Microserfs, about the Microsoft campus and the shortest path a programmer can take.

I'd hazard it's a predilection but not lim...

2009-06-23T13:39:19.791+08:00

I'd hazard it's a predilection but not limited to programmers. As a child I was a big fan of the book cheaper by the dozen. I always remember the father determining that it was faster buttoning your shirt from the bottom up.

One reason I got into computers because I found most of the people I had as chess partners in NYC were computer programmers. I'll never forget the guy earning US$50.00/hr (early 80s) and how he really couldn't play chess that well.

Once I started working with computers I found a very enjoyable hobby that I'd get paid for doing.

I too automatically optimize everything as habit. In addition I have a preference for precision coupled with little patience for people who apparently think otherwise.

ur doing it wrong! just move close to the office ...

2009-06-23T12:18:06.596+08:00

ur doing it wrong! just move close to the office and move on to other problems. like fixing this comment box.

I too come from a similar background (progamming f...

2009-06-23T11:16:11.248+08:00

I too come from a similar background (progamming from a young age) and I was wondering the same thing and get exactly what your saying, and since I can relate I guess

@other people: The main point is that it is not only a "programmer" who optimizes life, but rather the depth, consciousness, and relativly automatic nature of the process that seemes to by a directly application of the same logic we use when we are programming.

I do this all the time for paths, but you can apply this to people to.

For example: what possible benefits can becomming associated with this person bring me, what will it do to my status, their status etc, how will it affect the realtionships of either party respectively and/or potential for future relationships for others, etc.. but usually I ignore such thoughts and act irrespective of the previous thought exercise.

I am not a programmer and have no interest in prog...

2009-06-23T09:41:11.529+08:00

I am not a programmer and have no interest in programming.
I am just a non nerd that makes a living from computers.

I would just do the walk because i would be too busy thinking about getting laid or the day before when i got laid rather than the best way to program some nerdy stuff.

Everyone does this unconciously. The fact that he...

2009-06-23T05:21:53.198+08:00

Everyone does this unconciously. The fact that he has a mathamatical/programming background allows him to devulge further into the details.

Not everyone who is a programmer does this. Most could care less. If you look around, you'll find people have streamlined specific parts of there life and work. The 'How sad..." comment is just another teenager being calcous with another persons interest.

Aerospace engineers are cheifly concerned with safety and optimization. We fall into the same sterotype of optimizing what other people consider inane. It's fun and it makes us better at our jobs.

I like to implement OSPF around the house and BGP ...

2009-06-23T05:18:33.938+08:00

I like to implement OSPF around the house and BGP when out and about ;-)