Re: programmer's mind

The next two paragraphs are primarily here as set-up for the third:

At risk of spoiling the effect: partly, I was hoping to indicate the
limitations of motivation by money and consuming things in general --
I don't have an alternative and "higher" good to point to directly --
although certainly sometimes creating things or otherwise changing the
world is reward enough.

On the other hand, it is also possible to view "experience" as "that
which is consumed"; and I don't particularly want to set up a fight
between these two (allegedly) different kinds of motivation. Really I
don't think dualism has much of a case here.

A more core point to the example is along the lines of: "the way that
can be stated is not the true way." Things are really complex, so any
one answer is bound to have some weak spots and these are bound to be
exposed at some point.

One of the things that I've recently gotten in my readings on zen is
the advice to "act normal". It is pretty good advice I think, and it
applies here. The programmer's mind probably isn't very different
from the mind of a person who does other things. Generally good
heuristics are by definition going to be good a lot of the time.

For example, your point about "incremental progress" is in accord with
the way I usually think. In most reasonable models, work is done by
"integrating the margins". Of course, when problems are
high-dimensional, there are a lot of margins to look at. (Just for
example, diminishing returns due to sleepiness tend to constrain the
amount of useful writing one can do late at night, even
incrementally.)

As for the "dreaming sessions" -- as you stated these were valuable in
their own right. The precise strategies for further development may
be vastly different from the strategies considerd then. But maybe a
few curious details would be the same, e.g. putting together a working
environment and style that you get a kick out of working in.

On that note: one of the things most people tend to like is talking
with other people about topics of mutual concern. "How to find the
people, topics, and directions for the conversations to go" can be
challenging problems. We live in a world of working answers, but can
perhaps make some further improvements. (Presumably a lot of what
people do is try to improve things...)