Programmer’s guilt
Programming has always put me to a special mental state. I don’t get there by any other means. Reading is different. Maybe watching a movie, it comes close. It has a similar immersive aspect. Programmers know this, they call it “being in the zone.” Flow is another name for it.
It’s not exactly this flow I want to talk about. Flow is only a part of it, a part of a sequence of mental states I go through when I sit down programming.
First, there’s a friction between me and the task. I take a stab and it resists. I walk around it. Maybe from another angle? I’m like a dog before he takes a nap. He turns around, circle after circle, to find a position that would give him a rest. I look into the code, check a function here and there. It takes me some time to get comfortable.
The moment comes when I can finally set a task for myself. It’s not the big task I set out to solve, it’s only a tiny part of it. All I know it lies in the right direction. If I take a step, the next one will follow. I don’t need to know what comes two steps later.
I solve the mini-task, it’s a mini-victory. No time to be complacent. The next mini-task presents itself. I don’t make an effort to phrase it for myself. It’s already there. It feels to obvious that that’s what I have to solve next.
What I’ve described so far is a loop, a sequence of small tasks and victories. This is the flow part, concentrated joy. As long as nothing intrudes your privacy.
But I want to write about the after-effect. When I get out of the zone a couple of hours later. It may be late in the night, it usually is. I feel accomplished, it’s been quite a ride. I’m exhausted at the same time and well aware there’s still a lot of work to do. The trance state slowly evaporates. I look out of the window and realize a whole day has passed without me being part of it. It’s like coming to my senses after a drug-induced coma. Where am I? Or rather, where have those hours leaked? I wasted my time. Just another day without … Without what? I can’t tell. I just feel a growing guilt.
This is the guilt I wanted to talk about, this feeling of waste of my time. I haven’t heard other programmers mention it. Is this only me? Or is it a secret component of a programmer’s life?
