Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and context switching (2022)

Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by eitland on Thursday April 06, 2023 @04:25AM (#35465748)

> If someone talking about weight loss suggested that people should just never eat breakfast to reduce the amount of eating they do in a given day, it would be relevant to offer a critique[...]

Tangential, but might be interesting to some:

sometime before the pandemic, after (I think) 30 years of always eating some kind of breakfast, I accidentally missed breakfast once and that day I felt I had significantly less brain fog after lunch.

So I tried again to see if it was just a coincidence, but it had happened again and again.

And, I realized, as long as I don't start to mentally prepare for breakfast I don't start feeling hunger either.

I'm not suggesting this is a good idea for everyone, only that for people like me who has followed "best practice" for decades and doesn't feel too enthusiastic about it, testing out alternative approaches might be a good idea.

PS: the total amount of hunger I feel in a day seems to have gone down too.

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by Xcelerate on Thursday April 06, 2023 @04:55AM (#35465933)

I noticed that too. I also started skipping lunch for the same reason. If I do eat lunch, it’s only on days with a lot of meetings in the afternoon. If I want focused work, I skip it.

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by eitland on Thursday April 06, 2023 @07:40AM (#35467028)

Actually same here: I try to only take a couple of glasses of milk and a brisk walk for lunch.

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by watwut on Thursday April 06, 2023 @07:19AM (#35466853)

When I do not eat breakfast, I am unable to focus on work. It does not matter when I am in dysfunctional team (so I was actually not eating breakfast), but the moment I needed to produce, I had to eat.

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by eitland on Thursday April 06, 2023 @07:39AM (#35467020)

Seems to be most common.

My comment is only pointing out that for me it is the opposite: I work better without breakfast.

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by mrguyorama on Thursday April 06, 2023 @12:35PM (#35470845)

That's very unusual. Your brain needs ready supplies of glucose to function. Not eating breakfast is forcing your body to turn energy stores into glucose in a way that it tries to avoid and probably doesn't give your brain ample supply, or just not function well.

Do you actually work better, or have you decided that you work better?

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Re:Programmer interrupted: The cost of interruption and cont... by eitland on Friday April 07, 2023 @02:40AM (#35478815)

Many well functioning people, including IIRC navy attack divers, live on a glucose free diet for a long time, so I am not alone.

As for if I work better or just have decided I work better, I only have 4 or 5 years of experience with this but despite the fact that I love breakfast and lunch I still skip them because the brain fog I seem to get between 1200 and 1400 on days when I eat breakfast just isn't worth it.

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