this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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The trick is leaving good notes to yourself outlining the thought process, what was tried, what should be tried next.
Then you read your notes in the morning with a fresh mind and <click!>
If you just slam the laptop shut in frustration, you lose all progress.
For me what generally happens if I stop at 9PM, I will work through the problem in my sleep (and it will prevent me from getting a good night sleep), but I will often find a breakthrough the next morning during shower time.
I’m talking about those hard, multi-days debugging problems that nobody can figure out, but as someone else raised, that’s why I get paid good money for it.
It still sucks though. That first response in the thread rings so true, ok now I get it, no you don’t…
Generally speaking (NOT 100% of the time), that takes more time that you don't have, as you're outrunning fatigue. You can waste time writing down notes (which you're supposed to do anyway in-line in the code as you go streamlined like), or you can solve the problem. Plus the quality of the notes you leave, if written up at the end when you're ready to leave work, may not be good enough to help the next day. /shrug
But honestly, if that works for you, more power to ya! 🙂
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I take notes as I work in case I get pulled onto another task.
Doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to summarize at the end of the day.
I take notes in-line as I go too. But having to stop and then write (well, type in a text editor) everything I was thinking about for the last X hours, when I'm super fatigued, can be problematic for me to do. At the point I quit, I'm not really thinking anymore, even just to summarize the day.
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