2014年/03月/11日
活明白
Business Insider published an article today called The Stress of Being a Computer Programmer is Literally Driving Many of them Crazy. It covers the typical culprits: Imposter Syndrome, long work hours, burnout, etc. and points out that while job stress has been traditionally laid at the feet of bad management, it is increasingly coming from within the programmer community itself, as a kind of culturally imposed litmus test for determining the dedication level of any particular programmer. In other words: if you aren’t slinging code in your spare time, you just aren’t going to cut it. Coupling this pressure with the speed at which new technologies, libraries, languages, platforms, frameworks, SDKs and text editors are released is like dousing a bonfire with jet fuel.
But here’s the rub.
Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one.
Practice with any technology or language is useful as a means of learning tools and techniques, but it will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools. What makes you a better programmer is learning how to think about problems, since you are ultimately encoding your own thought process into a series of instructions the computer will follow in an attempt to solve problems. And learning to think properly–about abstractions, about composition, about information, about thinking itself–can come from many sources other than programming.
Paul Graham observed this in his amazing essay Hackers and Painters:
I’ve found that the best sources of ideas are not the other fields that have the word “computer” in their names,
but the other fields inhabited by makers. Painting has been a much richer source of ideas than the theory of computation.
可事实上问题不在于此。编程，就跟写作、绘画、作曲一样，首先是一种创造性的活动，而不是一个种技术工作
当然，对一种技术或编程语言的不断练习和保持熟悉很重要，这其实就是在学习使用工具和技法，但它并不会让你本质上变成一名更优秀的程序员。 它只是让你能更熟练的使用工具。而能让你成为更优秀的程序员的是学会如何思考问题，因为最终你是把脑子里思考出的逻辑转换成了一系列操作计算机的指令，让计算机遵照指令解决问题。
而学习如何正确的思考—— 如何抽象归纳，如何组合，如何分析信息，如何自我反省——可以通过各种方式，远非只有编程一种。
Paul Graham 在他的精彩著作《黑客与画家》一书中说：
我发现那些最有价值的灵感的源泉都不是那些跟“计算机”这个词相关的领域，
而是那些跟动手创造相关的领域。绘画就是一个比计算机理论能提供更丰富灵感的思想源泉。
Branching out into other fields, having hobbies other than programming can be a tremendous benefit to your day job. You don’t need to burn a bazillion hours writing code. Burn that time writing, or reading, or arguing with someone over coffee (or your favorite scotch!). Burn that time running, or lifting, or both. Physical activity pumps oxygen to the brain, nurturing that wonderful organ that is you.
I started running 3 years ago. Actually getting fresh air and sunlight makes me a healthier person, and also gives me time to bounce around ideas in my head while I’m passing the miles to dropped beats and house vocals.
拓展其它领域的技术，培养除编程之外的其它爱好，这会给你的日常工作带来巨大的帮助。程序员根本不需要没日没夜的写代码。 你应该把这些时间用于和他人交流，和大家一起边喝咖啡(或你喜爱的东西)边编码、阅读、讨论。你应该把这些时间用于跑步或举重。 身体锻炼给大脑补充氧气，滋养这个最神奇的器官，这才是你需要的。我三年前开始跑步。呼吸新鲜的空气、沐浴清新的阳光让我变得更加快乐，跑出几公里远离繁杂的琐事，我的脑子有了更多的时间来激发灵感。
The point is that investing in your own mind for its own sake will make you a better programmer. You can always learn new syntax, or tools, or whatever, but if all you do is program, you’re actually working against yourself. Sometimes you have to put in the hours, when the barn is burning, but this should be the exception not the rule. If the barn is always burning, you need to find another barn. Sometimes you need to go heads down, for weeks or even months, to make your personal passion a reality. Then take a break. Constant, unvaried exertion will only lead to diminishing returns, the exact opposite of making you a better programmer. Last November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month), an informal contest where participants write a 50,000 word book in 30 days. I woke up early, spent a few hours writing, worked my 8+ hour day job, then spent my evenings writing as well. Every day. For 30 days. I started getting sick at the end of the month from that exertion, but it was necessary for me to accomplish an item on my bucket list: to write a novel. And I haven’t written a thing for several months. I needed a break, a change of pace, to make me better. Developing software is no different. The BI article also makes the fascinating observation that “Women programmers frequently confess to suffering from imposter syndrome… But a lot of male programmers increasingly say that that they feel it, too. ” The gender role fluctuation that has characterized the 20th and 21st centuries is finally catching up to men. Women are seeing, first hand, the “disposable male” mindset enshrined and foisted on men, especially in the (traditionally male-oriented) workplace, a role which I believe arose from the necessity of survival but which is obsolete in a more affluent and flexible society. And men are seeing the reaction of women to the dehumanizing aspects of the male gender roles and are joining to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo. As more women enter technology fields, they bring an outsider’s perspective to which men need to pay heed, and women need to understand the system they find so unappealing is what men have had to live with and accept for a very long time. But together we don’t have to any longer, and that is powerful stuff.
Don’t burn yourself out to be a better programmer. Do what you love, and love many things. You will be better for it.
不要再让自己精疲力竭，这样不会让你成为更好的程序员。做你爱做的事，爱上更多的兴趣。你将会变的更优秀。