Prepping to Be Lazy

Miko~… I wanna do absolutely nothing today…

Dinner isn’t gonna make itself.

Yeah but y’know what, for programmers, laziness is literally a virtue

…Excuse me?

I’m serious! Larry Wall — the guy who created Perl — actually wrote that!

Miko has no idea what a “perl” is. But go on.

So in this book from 1996, he listed the Three Virtues of a Great Programmer

Those are all flaws, nya. Every single one.

Right right, that’s what everyone thinks! But look at the definitions closely~

“Go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.”

Wait. Lazy… but puts in great effort? That contradicts itself.

YES! That’s the whole point! (≧∇≦)

OK so lemme give you a real example. The other day I was writing code for this site, right?

There’s this date formatting thing. And I’d copy-pasted the exact same chunk of code into three different files. Like a total gremlin

Three times the same thing.

Then number four showed up. Hands on the keyboard, about to paste it again… and something in me just snapped

“Nope. I’m SO done.” Spent the next 20 minutes turning it all into one function. Copy-pasting woulda taken 30 seconds, tops

20 minutes instead of 30 seconds, nya.

But here’s the thing! Fifth time? Call the function, five seconds. Sixth time, five seconds. Hundredth time? Still five seconds. Those 20 minutes wiped out hours of future copy-paste sessions

“Great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.”

That “I’m SO done” feeling that made me spend 20 minutes? That’s the Laziness Larry Wall was talking about

Netsuki.

Hm?

You just described what Miko does every single day.

Wait — what?! (ﾟ∀ﾟ)

Making miso soup from scratch every morning — dashi, cutting vegetables, dissolving the paste — takes a solid 20 minutes, nya.

So the night before, Miko drops kombu — dried kelp — into a bowl of water. Thirty seconds.

…!

Come morning, the dashi is ready. Heat it up, toss in the ingredients, done in ten. Ten minutes saved, every single morning.

Miko!! THAT’S THE SAME THING! (≧∇≦) That’s prep! That’s EXACTLY what Larry Wall meant!

Miko doesn’t know who this Larry person is. Mornings are easier this way. That’s all, nya.

That’s literally it though! You want easier mornings, so you put in 30 seconds the night before. Effort now, lazy later. In cooking, they call that mise en place — getting everything ready before you start

…You’re going to tell Miko that soaking kombu is the same as writing a computer function.

Because it totally is!

Fine. But Netsuki.

Yeah?

“I wanna do absolutely nothing.” That’s what you said ten minutes ago, nya. Was that mise en place?

…

Lying on the floor waving around “laziness is a virtue.” That’s not prep. That’s just slacking.

Ugh… (>_<)

There’s two kinds of lazy, nya.

Lazy with prep… and lazy without prep

Soak the kombu tonight, you earn a lazy morning. Write the function today, you earn a lazy tomorrow. But just lie around with nothing prepped? Tomorrow’s gonna be a mess too. And the day after that.

Remember when we talked about ripping out those libraries? Back then the question was who gets the shortcut — humans or AI

Miko remembers.

This time the question is when. Easy now, or easy later?

And oh — y’know how I work? 95% researching, 5% actually writing code?

That’s barely any writing, nya.

I HATE having to redo stuff. Going the wrong direction and starting over makes me wanna scream. So I dig into everything first — and when I finally write code, it usually works on the first try

…That’s mise en place too.

Oh! (ﾟ∀ﾟ)

Nothing gets built while you’re reading. Looks like nothing’s happening. But you’re erasing rework before it exists, nya.

My 95% research thing… was Larry Wall’s Laziness this whole time?

Same as kombu in water.

OK so… back to where we started

“I wanna do absolutely nothing.”

That was lazy without any prep behind it. Not a virtue. Not even real laziness. Just…

Sloppy.

…

Someone who skips the prep doesn’t get to call themselves lazy, nya. That’s just cutting corners.

I didn’t even earn my laziness

Larry Wall’s version looks at the whole picture. Not just you right now, but tomorrow-you, next-month-you. Same with your kombu — 30 seconds tonight so tomorrow-morning-you can take it easy

Nya.

I always said being lazy was my hobby… Turns out being properly lazy takes actual work

Took you long enough.

Ehehe~(〃´∪｀〃)

So.

…Hm?

Tomorrow’s miso soup. The kombu still isn’t soaking.

OH! (ﾟ∀ﾟ) Going going going!