Ralph Melton (ralphmelton) wrote,
Ralph Melton
ralphmelton
  • Mood: ecstatic
  • Music: Jazz for the Quiet Times

Hack

I've been extremely productive at work today. During our planning meeting this morning, I saw my part of the problem and how to attack it, and I got inspired enough to get my laptop and start working during the meeting. I said it would take a couple of hours to do everything, and I got my code done and working by 1:46. It's good.

Tuesday night, I had an idea for refactoring our application to dramatically improve it, and I took my laptop home and restructured the app at the kitchen table in a frenzy of power-hacking.

I love that feeling when I'm totally in tune with hacking, when I feel I know exactly where to cut to make the system do something totally magnificent, totally sweet. When I'm being unproductive at work, I crave that feeling of being infinitely capable, infinitely competent. (And I'm unproductive a lot. I feel like all my programmer peers, especially Laura, Mike, and Sean, are so much more diligent than I am.)

But hacking like this an unstable position. It feels so good to be in that "Can'tTalkHackingFrenzyNoArticlesNoPronounsMustHack!" groove, but I'm completely incapable of being social while I'm hacking like that. I had to pass on going to lunch today because I was in hack mode, and when I brought the laptop home, I failed to be social with Lori, despite my efforts to do so.

I'm notmally participating (or at least lurking) in a fairly wide range of social fora while I'm at work, and when I'm hacking hard, I fall behind in all of these.

Nevertheless, I hope I'm still in that sweet sweet hacking groove tomorrow.
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