How to save eyesight and develop imagination, working with a voice recorder
Good day! Hands have long been stretching to share experience on Habré, or, behold, GT, the benefit of experience has been gained a lot in the scientific field, in teaching, and in algorithm-making. But work in a large corporation is tied up in terms of writing articles about the systems being developed, and writing some common words on the subject has very little meaning and benefit. However, it came up with the idea to share the approach to work that allows you to maintain health without losing performance, and sometimes even noticeably increasing it.
The weak point of the programmer - and who in our time is not a programmer? - is the vision. The code, documents, presentations, diagrams and other picture-text tinsel, dancing for days on the monitor, very much puts the vision in the deep minus in diopters and in the delta-neighborhood of zero in sharpness. At the same time, I cannot boast of my own vision, which does not require either glasses, the proximity of the object in question, its size, or significant lighting power for successful work. It is possible to keep it in this state, largely due to the voice recording technique reflected in the title. This approach allows you to work not only without a monitor, but even without a pen with a piece of paper.
In general terms, such work can be described as follows. If you need to think carefully about some part of the activity, which then, of course, will result in the source code, presentation or text document, then you should not immediately rush to the editor. Yes, many people know that to rush immediately to the editor of the development environment is, in general, a children's, zero, level. To open a text document for writing a work plan can, perhaps, be called the first level of development. On the second level, let me put a pen with a piece of paper or a board with a marker (by the way, I like chalk more), because refusing to turn on the computer allows not only to move the development environment further away for better development of the work plan, but also to give your eyes a few more minutes or tens of minutes not to stare at the monitor. The levels, it should be noted, are completely conditional, taken right at the time of writing the text from my low ceiling, just for some distinction between the approaches of different people. Sometimes it will so click that you go straight into the code, you make very significant edits there - and everything works fine the first time. But it seems to be saying that all planning and thinking out happened in the head, and there it sometimes happens in one second.
Actually, I am writing about the third level of development of preparation for work. You do not even need to take a pen with a piece of paper, you can just close your eyes and turn on the voice recorder. Imagination, however, will also have to be activated, but with it, perhaps, programmers usually have everything in order. Now it may seem the most pleasant that, in contrast to the approaches of all previous levels, there is complete peace of mind here. For example, the first draft of this article, I slandered on the recorder, lying with my eyes closed in bed, before going to bed. But the rest of the image perception apparatus is, frankly, not the most pleasant. The sweetest bun is precisely the feeling of the power of work in the head, without attracting the outside world. We can simply say that a good practice of preliminary thinking about work using a voice recorder is proposed. I'm not talking about the fact that on the way home from work on the bus, on the subway or in private transport, it’s best to record your thoughts on a dictaphone. Eh, he said ... And yet, practicing this kind of dictation, at some point you come to an amazing opportunity not only to ponder and jot down, but to do all the work completely, in detail, without resorting to anything other than imagination and a tape recorder.
')
This could be an article and finish. The message is simple: before you write code, rivet a presentation, documentation, or even solve a physical and mathematical problem with rather big formulas, try to take a tape recorder and do all the same kinds of activities with your eyes closed. While walking or driving, it’s better not to close your eyes. It turns out that nothing prevents verbally describing the names and parameters of functions, their interaction, their stuffing, working with memory, indexes of elements in arrays, data types and even bit contents. Nothing hinders in the same way “in words” and not in practice, taking complex integrals, describing integrands, domains of integration, substitutions, elementary transition methods for the next equal sign, etc. Such work will really reduce the burden on vision and surprise with the capabilities of its own, it seemed to be empty, of a head.
However, the article does not end there. Bad lecturer without life examples. I bought the dictaphone at the moment when I had three jobs at once: teaching math with an assistant load, scientific activity that I wanted to disperse after defending my Ph.D. to enter the doctoral path, and R & D activity in the field of 3GPP and related standards, for which only and paid some reasonable money, unlike the first two activities.
It was necessary to write a report on Mobile IP technology. Something like a feasibility study. Despite the simplicity of the technology idea and, generally speaking, non-basic research, the entire zoo of systems and subsystems, which contains the third and fourth mobile networks at the time, generations, as well as Wi-Fi networks and attempts to involve them in the networks of cellular operators, required to create any literate report, dig in such a bunch of IETF, IEEE and OMA standards that mom don't grieve. I just physically began to notice how the numbers of houses that I could distinguish when looking from the balcony became closer and closer, and those that were distinguishable yesterday turned into an underloaded Progressive JPEG today. After all, in addition to reading documents, it was necessary to fix the learned material somewhere else, that is, to constantly switch between files, copy, paste, rearrange pieces of text, append, search, where to insert text that came later, but it is vital for understanding earlier and etc. Reading in itself is not so tedious as these same throwing between documents, presentations and other electric waste. Technical standards also have the habit of invoking each other in the most obscene way. Authors, of course, can be understood, but to rake all these reference trees with multiple branches, and then breaking eyes in search of a document with the necessary number in a folder on your own computer is a pleasure worthy of the most radical masochist.
And then I took the recorder. Moving on to the next document, I simply pronounced his name and calmly read it, dictating individual quotes, descriptions of pictures and diagrams, and my own thoughts as we read. Periodically, the same picture, which I understood at the moment, indicating what large and small elements it lacks, was also there in the sound file. And when he found these elements, he told in the same way where they were found, what they are and how they are embedded in the whole structure. In a similar approach to work, the fact that the overall picture is very effective is drawn in many respects, but at the same time nothing prevents to closely examine any of its small details in detail. And all this is documented for further collection in the final document. When a deep understanding of the subject under study and a feeling of being able to state this understanding in the report comes, the recorder switches to accelerated playback mode, and the report is written from scratch to end in one sitting, except with only distractions to natural needs, but most often - to the next a cup of tea.
Another example is with formulas. Once I started searching for the equations of motion of a complex mechanical system, but at the same time it became necessary to make a 9-hour flight. The recorder, as usual, was in my pocket, and I thought that it was possible to record at least some initial thoughts about the design and analysis of this system. During the flight, in the conditions of shaking, darkness and drowsiness - in ordinary aircraft conditions - it was possible to think over all the generalized coordinates and connections, directions and zero rays for counting angles, thus introducing a bunch of variables, collecting them into a sickly Lagrangian, taking the necessary private and complete derivatives (see Lagrange mechanics ) and make some analysis of the obtained equations of motion, which, of course, were a set of harmonic oscillators with various kinds of interconnections. And all this, almost without opening the eyes. All the necessary things are beautifully described by words, and, as described, they are perfectly remembered and can be manipulated in imagination no worse than on paper or blackboard.
Obviously, the voice recorder at the third level of development is only a kind of crutch for the imagination, which is no longer needed at the fourth level. But the crutch is extremely convenient, allowing you to open unprecedented horizons. I came to him, generally speaking, trying to jump immediately to the fourth level while still in high school. My grandfather actively put me in plowing, hilling, weeding and picking potatoes, and at the same time I had to solve physical problems from remote courses at Moscow State University. I had to decide in my mind. In fact, as a rule, the tasks were not solved, and only they were thought out in general terms, but the tasks that were considered, as is well known, are solved quite naturally. Nevertheless, today I am not at all surprised that, for example, Stephen Hawking writes books and performs complicated calculations, being a little more mobile than a cucumber; and that Leonard Euler calmly, and perhaps even more actively engaged in mathematical physics after a complete loss of vision.
I will add more about dictaphones. The beauty of this device is difficult to estimate, having only some kind of voice recorder application on a smartphone. I use the device myself (can I use a bit of advertising?) Of the Olympus VN-713PC, which is not a professional tool but allows me to work blindly: turn on and pause the recording, rewind the recorded tracks, speed up playback and change its volume — all pleasant to the touch buttons, without fear of touching the touch screen in the wrong place.
And more about text editing. Here I wrote an article from a dictation record in one pass. In the next pass, I recite it to the dictaphone, again, not trying to correct the printed text, which requires periodic re-readings in order to avoid readability and logic changes. At the same time, however, the modified text is recited on the recorder: the sentences are corrected, new ones are added. At the third iteration, I listen to the voice recorder and insert edits into the printed text. The dictaphone allows during dictation by pressing a button to insert marks directly on the audio track, between which it is easy to move. For example, this text required only three revisions during the first re-reading. As a result, listening to everything entirely for the search for modifications is a bit wasteful, so it is convenient to use the movement between the tags. The second and third step can and, in general, it is desirable to repeat several times. The double-accelerated listening does not take much time, but it allows you to build a rather pleasant text.
Well, the last one. Dictation develops speech and oratorical abilities, which is still appreciated in the modern world, but it is often monstrously underdeveloped among programmers and other hard workers not the spoken front.
Thank you for attention. I hope someone will master.
The weak point of the programmer - and who in our time is not a programmer? - is the vision. The code, documents, presentations, diagrams and other picture-text tinsel, dancing for days on the monitor, very much puts the vision in the deep minus in diopters and in the delta-neighborhood of zero in sharpness. At the same time, I cannot boast of my own vision, which does not require either glasses, the proximity of the object in question, its size, or significant lighting power for successful work. It is possible to keep it in this state, largely due to the voice recording technique reflected in the title. This approach allows you to work not only without a monitor, but even without a pen with a piece of paper.
In general terms, such work can be described as follows. If you need to think carefully about some part of the activity, which then, of course, will result in the source code, presentation or text document, then you should not immediately rush to the editor. Yes, many people know that to rush immediately to the editor of the development environment is, in general, a children's, zero, level. To open a text document for writing a work plan can, perhaps, be called the first level of development. On the second level, let me put a pen with a piece of paper or a board with a marker (by the way, I like chalk more), because refusing to turn on the computer allows not only to move the development environment further away for better development of the work plan, but also to give your eyes a few more minutes or tens of minutes not to stare at the monitor. The levels, it should be noted, are completely conditional, taken right at the time of writing the text from my low ceiling, just for some distinction between the approaches of different people. Sometimes it will so click that you go straight into the code, you make very significant edits there - and everything works fine the first time. But it seems to be saying that all planning and thinking out happened in the head, and there it sometimes happens in one second.
Actually, I am writing about the third level of development of preparation for work. You do not even need to take a pen with a piece of paper, you can just close your eyes and turn on the voice recorder. Imagination, however, will also have to be activated, but with it, perhaps, programmers usually have everything in order. Now it may seem the most pleasant that, in contrast to the approaches of all previous levels, there is complete peace of mind here. For example, the first draft of this article, I slandered on the recorder, lying with my eyes closed in bed, before going to bed. But the rest of the image perception apparatus is, frankly, not the most pleasant. The sweetest bun is precisely the feeling of the power of work in the head, without attracting the outside world. We can simply say that a good practice of preliminary thinking about work using a voice recorder is proposed. I'm not talking about the fact that on the way home from work on the bus, on the subway or in private transport, it’s best to record your thoughts on a dictaphone. Eh, he said ... And yet, practicing this kind of dictation, at some point you come to an amazing opportunity not only to ponder and jot down, but to do all the work completely, in detail, without resorting to anything other than imagination and a tape recorder.
')
This could be an article and finish. The message is simple: before you write code, rivet a presentation, documentation, or even solve a physical and mathematical problem with rather big formulas, try to take a tape recorder and do all the same kinds of activities with your eyes closed. While walking or driving, it’s better not to close your eyes. It turns out that nothing prevents verbally describing the names and parameters of functions, their interaction, their stuffing, working with memory, indexes of elements in arrays, data types and even bit contents. Nothing hinders in the same way “in words” and not in practice, taking complex integrals, describing integrands, domains of integration, substitutions, elementary transition methods for the next equal sign, etc. Such work will really reduce the burden on vision and surprise with the capabilities of its own, it seemed to be empty, of a head.
However, the article does not end there. Bad lecturer without life examples. I bought the dictaphone at the moment when I had three jobs at once: teaching math with an assistant load, scientific activity that I wanted to disperse after defending my Ph.D. to enter the doctoral path, and R & D activity in the field of 3GPP and related standards, for which only and paid some reasonable money, unlike the first two activities.
It was necessary to write a report on Mobile IP technology. Something like a feasibility study. Despite the simplicity of the technology idea and, generally speaking, non-basic research, the entire zoo of systems and subsystems, which contains the third and fourth mobile networks at the time, generations, as well as Wi-Fi networks and attempts to involve them in the networks of cellular operators, required to create any literate report, dig in such a bunch of IETF, IEEE and OMA standards that mom don't grieve. I just physically began to notice how the numbers of houses that I could distinguish when looking from the balcony became closer and closer, and those that were distinguishable yesterday turned into an underloaded Progressive JPEG today. After all, in addition to reading documents, it was necessary to fix the learned material somewhere else, that is, to constantly switch between files, copy, paste, rearrange pieces of text, append, search, where to insert text that came later, but it is vital for understanding earlier and etc. Reading in itself is not so tedious as these same throwing between documents, presentations and other electric waste. Technical standards also have the habit of invoking each other in the most obscene way. Authors, of course, can be understood, but to rake all these reference trees with multiple branches, and then breaking eyes in search of a document with the necessary number in a folder on your own computer is a pleasure worthy of the most radical masochist.
And then I took the recorder. Moving on to the next document, I simply pronounced his name and calmly read it, dictating individual quotes, descriptions of pictures and diagrams, and my own thoughts as we read. Periodically, the same picture, which I understood at the moment, indicating what large and small elements it lacks, was also there in the sound file. And when he found these elements, he told in the same way where they were found, what they are and how they are embedded in the whole structure. In a similar approach to work, the fact that the overall picture is very effective is drawn in many respects, but at the same time nothing prevents to closely examine any of its small details in detail. And all this is documented for further collection in the final document. When a deep understanding of the subject under study and a feeling of being able to state this understanding in the report comes, the recorder switches to accelerated playback mode, and the report is written from scratch to end in one sitting, except with only distractions to natural needs, but most often - to the next a cup of tea.
Another example is with formulas. Once I started searching for the equations of motion of a complex mechanical system, but at the same time it became necessary to make a 9-hour flight. The recorder, as usual, was in my pocket, and I thought that it was possible to record at least some initial thoughts about the design and analysis of this system. During the flight, in the conditions of shaking, darkness and drowsiness - in ordinary aircraft conditions - it was possible to think over all the generalized coordinates and connections, directions and zero rays for counting angles, thus introducing a bunch of variables, collecting them into a sickly Lagrangian, taking the necessary private and complete derivatives (see Lagrange mechanics ) and make some analysis of the obtained equations of motion, which, of course, were a set of harmonic oscillators with various kinds of interconnections. And all this, almost without opening the eyes. All the necessary things are beautifully described by words, and, as described, they are perfectly remembered and can be manipulated in imagination no worse than on paper or blackboard.
Obviously, the voice recorder at the third level of development is only a kind of crutch for the imagination, which is no longer needed at the fourth level. But the crutch is extremely convenient, allowing you to open unprecedented horizons. I came to him, generally speaking, trying to jump immediately to the fourth level while still in high school. My grandfather actively put me in plowing, hilling, weeding and picking potatoes, and at the same time I had to solve physical problems from remote courses at Moscow State University. I had to decide in my mind. In fact, as a rule, the tasks were not solved, and only they were thought out in general terms, but the tasks that were considered, as is well known, are solved quite naturally. Nevertheless, today I am not at all surprised that, for example, Stephen Hawking writes books and performs complicated calculations, being a little more mobile than a cucumber; and that Leonard Euler calmly, and perhaps even more actively engaged in mathematical physics after a complete loss of vision.
I will add more about dictaphones. The beauty of this device is difficult to estimate, having only some kind of voice recorder application on a smartphone. I use the device myself (can I use a bit of advertising?) Of the Olympus VN-713PC, which is not a professional tool but allows me to work blindly: turn on and pause the recording, rewind the recorded tracks, speed up playback and change its volume — all pleasant to the touch buttons, without fear of touching the touch screen in the wrong place.
And more about text editing. Here I wrote an article from a dictation record in one pass. In the next pass, I recite it to the dictaphone, again, not trying to correct the printed text, which requires periodic re-readings in order to avoid readability and logic changes. At the same time, however, the modified text is recited on the recorder: the sentences are corrected, new ones are added. At the third iteration, I listen to the voice recorder and insert edits into the printed text. The dictaphone allows during dictation by pressing a button to insert marks directly on the audio track, between which it is easy to move. For example, this text required only three revisions during the first re-reading. As a result, listening to everything entirely for the search for modifications is a bit wasteful, so it is convenient to use the movement between the tags. The second and third step can and, in general, it is desirable to repeat several times. The double-accelerated listening does not take much time, but it allows you to build a rather pleasant text.
Well, the last one. Dictation develops speech and oratorical abilities, which is still appreciated in the modern world, but it is often monstrously underdeveloped among programmers and other hard workers not the spoken front.
Thank you for attention. I hope someone will master.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/364067/
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