David R. MacIver's Blog

Interest bandwidth

Highlight from the #scala IRC channel:

13:21 < DRMacIver> I have a somewhat unfortunate theory. I suspect the amount one cares about programming issues is inversely proportional to how inherently interesting one's work is.
13:22 < DRMacIver> Or at least negatively correlated
13:22 < ijuma> DRMacIver: is this based on personal experience? ;)
13:22 < DRMacIver> Yes
13:22  * DRMacIver finds it much harder to get worked up about language issues these days
13:23 < DRMacIver> Which is in large part because I'm doing a lot more interesting borderline computer sciencey work
13:24 < dgreensp> yeah, I do a lot of interesting work and only rarely stop to think about languages
13:24 < ijuma> yeah, I noticed. I think it makes sense. People have limited bandwidth and if work is interesting, it's likely to take quite a bit of it
13:25 < DRMacIver> I think the other issue is that people want to find what they do interesting. And so if *what* they do isn't interesting they have to become interested in *how* they do it.
13:25 < DRMacIver> But yes, the bandwidth thing is also a big part of it
13:26 < dgreensp> bandwidth minimum, bandwidth maximum :)
13:26 < DRMacIver> ?
13:27 < ijuma> DRMacIver: agreed
13:27 < dgreensp> er, the two points seemed related -- people need to be interested in something, but they can't be interested in too many things at once
13:28 < DRMacIver> Oh, right.
13:28 < DRMacIver> Yes. That's a good way of looking at it.

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Best of drmaciver.com | David R. MacIver on 2014-01-12 13:14:40:

[…] Interest bandwidth. The theory that interest in programming languages is strongly correlated to lack of interest in what you’re doing with them. This was my theory at the time for my waning interest in the subject. I think it was true but incomplete. […]