Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming?

Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming? by everyone on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:22PM (#10024049)

What your describing is the best part for me. Obviously spending days languishing in confused and lonely impotence is horrible, but no job (in my experience so far) has the same high of going from producing nothing (ie. program doesnt work at all) to producing a perfect working product in one second, one line, one moment of insight.

As I get more experienced I get stuck or encounter problems less and less, I think I just keep doing more challenging or unfamiliar work in order to keep chasing that high.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming? by everyone on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:31PM (#10024113)

Also if I have to do an unknown unknown which could result in getting stuck for a while I will schedule loads and loads of time for it. Like make a reasonable estimate and then double it. Then it often turns out that you solve it in a fraction of the alloted time and you feel awesome! Definitely dont compound the stress by adding time pressure if at all possible.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming? by everyone on Friday August 07, 2015 @02:27PM (#10024086)

Also to answer your question,HOw do I actually get through the bad patch? if I encounter a problem I tend feel like like a Terrier with a bone. Sorta mad, affronted, like I'm gonna git this problem no matter what! Though I am naturally very stubborn and dogged.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming? by grover_hartmann on Friday August 07, 2015 @05:23PM (#10025105)

I enjoy hard programming challenges, I'm not saying I don't enjoy them.

I'm saying, how do you deal with stress of tight schedules and deadlines AND having to solve a hard programming problem.

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