I can relate to the <write line of code> and immediately switch to Twitter, email, etc. In fact, this is me right now!
However when I'm working on something truly interesting and challenging, all the distractions vanish. Tweets go unread, emails unanswered, RSS ignored. Unfortunately that state has become a lot more rare lately as I slug away on uninteresting parts of the project and my mind wanders to new ideas I don't have time or opportunity to play with.
I do think that when I was younger it was easier to be utterly immersed in a project because the whole thing was still new and challenging. Now some of the stuff I used to spend hours or days or weeks toiling away with intense concentration feel like.. busy work. It feels like I shouldn't have to program in assembly anymore and that it's tedious. It feels like I shouldn't have to implement yet another <insert data structure or process>. The act of implementing a lot of the small pieces are no longer interesting and instead I just want to get on to the large scale interesting bits, but it can seem that there's so much boilerplate and cruft in the way...
However when I'm working on something truly interesting and challenging, all the distractions vanish. Tweets go unread, emails unanswered, RSS ignored. Unfortunately that state has become a lot more rare lately as I slug away on uninteresting parts of the project and my mind wanders to new ideas I don't have time or opportunity to play with.
I do think that when I was younger it was easier to be utterly immersed in a project because the whole thing was still new and challenging. Now some of the stuff I used to spend hours or days or weeks toiling away with intense concentration feel like.. busy work. It feels like I shouldn't have to program in assembly anymore and that it's tedious. It feels like I shouldn't have to implement yet another <insert data structure or process>. The act of implementing a lot of the small pieces are no longer interesting and instead I just want to get on to the large scale interesting bits, but it can seem that there's so much boilerplate and cruft in the way...
And so I check Hacker News...