To Code is Human
summary
Argues that treating the brain and body as the primary engineering tools yields fewer bugs and steadier output: an exhausted engineer once ships a cache bug that costs a day; a quick refactor of a color-parsing snippet reveals three real defects (bad hex digits, missing punctuation, a missing method call). Gives actionable practices: regular sleep and meal times, minimize high‑insulin carbs, exercise, use decision hygiene to avoid decision fatigue, prefer red‑green‑refactor to leverage the dopamine reward cycle, and remember human vision limits like 14 minutes blind and seven plus or minus two working memory.
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chapters (32)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:41How I got here
- 2:31We are not robots
- 4:22Your body mind are incredible tools
- 5:09Antimatter
- 7:29Energy
- 8:14Sleep
- 9:25Rhythm
- 10:22Diet
- 11:03Exercise
- 12:21Hardware
- 12:42Software
- 13:15Limitations
- 14:45AgentTypography
- 14:58Memory
- 15:59Limits
- 17:18Stories
- 18:38Story
- 20:06Decision Fatigue
- 22:09Discipline is overrated
- 22:39The reward cycle
- 24:25Why development is important
- 25:47Distractions
- 26:53Continuous Feed
- 27:06Pair Programming
- 28:35Take Aways
- 29:15Invest in Yourself
- 29:30Have a Good Life
- 30:06Thanks for Assault
- 30:22Sleep cycles
- 34:04One Thing at a Time
- 35:42Problem Decomposition
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