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retsibsitoday at 10:00 AM1 replyview on HN

Studies show that your concentration remains sharper if your visual processing system is jarred out of its complacency at frequent, semi-random intervals, preventing you from lapsing into a low-effort 'skim-reading' mindset. It's something to do with the predictive processing model; over time, your brain comes to rely increasingly on top-down processing if its expectations are consistently met, and I guess there is some interplay between visual processing and semantic comprehension in this context.

(Just kidding! I think it is simply an annoying affectation.)


Replies

b112today at 11:55 AM

I had a boss who tried to claim that the "creative process" was helped by him interrupting my coding many, many times per day. With a loud, jovial greeting.

This was year 2000, when you had to write all code yourself, read man pages for info, without Stack Overflow or whatever to guide you. You were more isolated in such tasks, often thinking deeply, especially as a sole dev in a company.

Point is, your joke just brought all that trama back. I'm a peaceful man, but I almost hit him a few times. Major stress. He sort of stopped it when one time, I think I literally has rageful murder in my eyes. He took a step back. and never did it again.

A bendiction... may no other coder experience this horror.