One day last week, as I was juggling my mental list of Things That Absolutely Have To Be Done Today, I started jotting down some notes on a paper pad I keep nearby. These notes involved going through a network management application distributed across 8 Sun servers. Halfway through making my notes, I realized that I had done something like this:
foreach proxy server {
foreach TL1 process {
update configuration files
stop the process
run it manually
debug it
when it's good, start the process again
}
}
Note: TL1 (Transaction Language 1) is a text format used by telco equipment. See http://www.tl1.com for more information.
Has anyone else experienced this? The point when you're so wrapped up in work that you start thinking more like a computer than a human being? Where you find it normal to write this kind of pseudo-code to manage your work and your life?
And do any of you start thinking that this isn't necessarily a bad thing?
I'm interested in anything else that coders and techies might use as a warning that they need a break, a vacation, to "get a life." The Programmer's Frustration node a few weeks ago discussed what people do when they need a break, but I'm interested in how you know you need that break in the first place.
Chumley 