On Friday 29 Dec 2006 12:00 am, Devdas Bhagat wrote: > Things which require you to keep large amounts of data in short term > memory, like programming, mathematics, chess, writing ... > > Think of it as the equivalent of doing surgery while maintaining > anaesthesia and blood flow and all the others things in an OT all by > yourself. Any interruption can be fatal to your thought process.
The example you quote is of physical activities about which humans decided long ago that doing all those things together (while possible) is basically unsafe and undesirable and the patient (not the surgeon) is at risk. That is why task sharing and subspecialization developed in medicine. Surgeons need to go to the toilet urgently and surgeons also die while operating. That does not generally mean much for the patient - the system is robust enough to cope with that without having to complain about the environment. Chess players cope with life circumstances as do mathematicians, writers and I guess most programmers too. If the act of programming gets thrown of gear by life events, could your example mean that programming should really move from a single-person work overload paradigm to a more effective and cooperative multiple person work sharing arrangement so that nobody has to get upset by unavoidable life circumstances? shiv
