Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

Before: hungry hacker After: sated hacker, evidence of much creative goings-on in the kitchen

Has anyone else ever compared the proces of coding to cooking? You start out hungry in a relatively clean kitchen with empty pots and a single fork. Before you know it, there are mushrooms in one pot, bacon in another, and you think 'mmm, tomatoes' and there they go. Some pasta soon joins the party and then herbs and cream come along too.

I have no idea what I'm eating could be called, but while cooking it up, it felt a lot like coding. Empty file, soon filled with many interesting functions, then some data happens or perhaps a piece of hardware comes along. More files start happening. You forget what you're working on from a macroscopic perspective but you're having so much fun it doesn't really matter.

And soon it will be time to refactor. Take a step back. And do the dishes.

Yum yum. The food. Not the code.