Is the programmer's job hard - a view from the point of view of psychophysiology
In the first words:
The fact is that I am not only a software developer, my first education is medical, I am fond of psychophysiology and am the author of cyber semantics. Due to this specificity, at the junction of two completely different disciplines, all sorts of interesting gizmos are sometimes visible. I want to briefly share.
1. - ... yes, but what is there - you sit, bale the keys ... - a familiar point of view? I have heard this more than once. So say people not familiar with the basics of the functioning of the human brain.
The fact is that at rest, our brain consumes 10% of the total energy consumed by the body. And for many people, these 10% are spent on the brain all their lives. However, when a person begins to actively use the brain, as it happens in the search for innovative solutions in software development, energy consumption increases to 25% -30%, and, according to some estimates, even more. That is, from an energy point of view, at this time you really chop wood. But not with his hands, but with his head. Hence the strongest feeling of physical fatigue after intensive development. Like ditches digging, right? And for the rest who do not use their brain, these sensations are completely unfamiliar. Hence the underestimation when viewed from the side.
2. The second significant point is that, unlike the same muscles, our brain is not directly connected to the general circulatory system. Google knows about the “blood-brain barrier” - it will tell you how this barrier reliably protects our brain from infections and parasites. And at the same time, this barrier is the bottleneck that does not allow us to overclock our CPU to maximum values. Such a structure is something like a chip and a cooler, but without thermal paste. Firstly, the brain naturally overheats at peak loads, for see paragraph 1. Secondly, in addition to overheating, there is the problem of the output of metabolic products - organic waste generated in the process. Do you know the sensation of muscle pain after intense physical labor? But removing waste from the muscles is much easier than from the brain. And you don’t feel the pain of the brain after intensive work just because there are no pain receptors in the brain itself, and it signals you about its overload in other ways.
So it turns out that “tapping the keys” is, in fact, one of the hardest activities in our society. It really is. And this is a medical scientific fact.
Moreover, pay attention: when you use patterns familiar to you in programming - the energy consumption is much lower than when you have to move away from the usual patterns to the side and create something completely new. That is why, for example, I consider it quite reasonable and reasonable to evaluate the hour of work - in different ways, depending on the ability to apply well-known patterns. And this moment, too, is not well understood in public consciousness. Because for a person who does not use his brain in life, “writing code” == “writing code”. But in reality - this is far from the case. There is “code writing” and there is “Code writing”, and they are! =, Although from the outside it looks exactly the same.
3. The third important aspect of this problem: inertia of the brain. Everything is interesting here. The fact is that although many of you are used to thinking about your brains and thoughts, in the categories of “hard” and “soft”, in the medical reality, the brain is not, in its pure form, neither one nor the other. Closest, from computer technology, the brain is to ancient chips, whose program is rigidly tied to their structure. Moreover, this structure (and, consequently, the program) is constantly changing. Of course, here, too, not everything is so monosyllabic (this is a very big topic), but it is important here to understand that:
- You can’t just take and send the killall command to the brain, and kill all the processes, even with very severe overload. Because the program processes taking place in the brain are quite rigidly tied to the very structure of the brain. And its restructuring always takes time. Sometimes a very big time. This is an important point in understanding the functioning of the brain. Programs that control our thoughts and actions are not just a sequence of electronic potentials that can be easily and simply overwritten to another. Even when it comes to short-term programs in the head, their inertia is always noticeably greater than that of programs in the computer.
And all of you are well aware that when you are heavily embedded in some kind of development project, you work on it constantly. And at work. And while eating. And on a walk. And even in a dream - in the morning what ideas come sound, right?
Partly for this reason, some programmers are slipping into alcoholism - they are trying to cope with the inertia of the brain and stop its work, at least temporarily, with the help of alcohol. To at least slightly relieve the overheated organ. However, this is also a separate big topic.
In general, I hope you learned something new and can tell your friends about it. Let everyone learn about the difficult life of the fighters of the intellectual front. About how those perishing on the front lines are those who, not knowing the basics of the physiology of their own brain, burned to the ground, completely losing all motivation and the ability to inspired coding.
If it turned out interesting - write comments - on request I will unfold the most interesting points.
Roman D.
- Working as a programmer-developer is hard work, comparable with an ax with a felling. And the problems of this work are greatly underestimated in the public mind.Now I substantiate this thesis from a scientific point of view.
The fact is that I am not only a software developer, my first education is medical, I am fond of psychophysiology and am the author of cyber semantics. Due to this specificity, at the junction of two completely different disciplines, all sorts of interesting gizmos are sometimes visible. I want to briefly share.
1. - ... yes, but what is there - you sit, bale the keys ... - a familiar point of view? I have heard this more than once. So say people not familiar with the basics of the functioning of the human brain.
The fact is that at rest, our brain consumes 10% of the total energy consumed by the body. And for many people, these 10% are spent on the brain all their lives. However, when a person begins to actively use the brain, as it happens in the search for innovative solutions in software development, energy consumption increases to 25% -30%, and, according to some estimates, even more. That is, from an energy point of view, at this time you really chop wood. But not with his hands, but with his head. Hence the strongest feeling of physical fatigue after intensive development. Like ditches digging, right? And for the rest who do not use their brain, these sensations are completely unfamiliar. Hence the underestimation when viewed from the side.
2. The second significant point is that, unlike the same muscles, our brain is not directly connected to the general circulatory system. Google knows about the “blood-brain barrier” - it will tell you how this barrier reliably protects our brain from infections and parasites. And at the same time, this barrier is the bottleneck that does not allow us to overclock our CPU to maximum values. Such a structure is something like a chip and a cooler, but without thermal paste. Firstly, the brain naturally overheats at peak loads, for see paragraph 1. Secondly, in addition to overheating, there is the problem of the output of metabolic products - organic waste generated in the process. Do you know the sensation of muscle pain after intense physical labor? But removing waste from the muscles is much easier than from the brain. And you don’t feel the pain of the brain after intensive work just because there are no pain receptors in the brain itself, and it signals you about its overload in other ways.
So it turns out that “tapping the keys” is, in fact, one of the hardest activities in our society. It really is. And this is a medical scientific fact.
Moreover, pay attention: when you use patterns familiar to you in programming - the energy consumption is much lower than when you have to move away from the usual patterns to the side and create something completely new. That is why, for example, I consider it quite reasonable and reasonable to evaluate the hour of work - in different ways, depending on the ability to apply well-known patterns. And this moment, too, is not well understood in public consciousness. Because for a person who does not use his brain in life, “writing code” == “writing code”. But in reality - this is far from the case. There is “code writing” and there is “Code writing”, and they are! =, Although from the outside it looks exactly the same.
3. The third important aspect of this problem: inertia of the brain. Everything is interesting here. The fact is that although many of you are used to thinking about your brains and thoughts, in the categories of “hard” and “soft”, in the medical reality, the brain is not, in its pure form, neither one nor the other. Closest, from computer technology, the brain is to ancient chips, whose program is rigidly tied to their structure. Moreover, this structure (and, consequently, the program) is constantly changing. Of course, here, too, not everything is so monosyllabic (this is a very big topic), but it is important here to understand that:
- You can’t just take and send the killall command to the brain, and kill all the processes, even with very severe overload. Because the program processes taking place in the brain are quite rigidly tied to the very structure of the brain. And its restructuring always takes time. Sometimes a very big time. This is an important point in understanding the functioning of the brain. Programs that control our thoughts and actions are not just a sequence of electronic potentials that can be easily and simply overwritten to another. Even when it comes to short-term programs in the head, their inertia is always noticeably greater than that of programs in the computer.
And all of you are well aware that when you are heavily embedded in some kind of development project, you work on it constantly. And at work. And while eating. And on a walk. And even in a dream - in the morning what ideas come sound, right?
Partly for this reason, some programmers are slipping into alcoholism - they are trying to cope with the inertia of the brain and stop its work, at least temporarily, with the help of alcohol. To at least slightly relieve the overheated organ. However, this is also a separate big topic.
In general, I hope you learned something new and can tell your friends about it. Let everyone learn about the difficult life of the fighters of the intellectual front. About how those perishing on the front lines are those who, not knowing the basics of the physiology of their own brain, burned to the ground, completely losing all motivation and the ability to inspired coding.
If it turned out interesting - write comments - on request I will unfold the most interesting points.
Roman D.
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