In Praise of Drudgery

I was refactoring some code today and I had to go through a bunch of functions calls to give them more sensible names and change their parameters slightly. As I was grinding through the search and replace process it occurred to me that I could probably use a fancy AI powered CoPilot thing to automate the job. But I didn’t. I quite enjoyed the laborious grind through the code. I have some of my best ideas when I’m washing the car or mowing the lawn. I rather like a task which is mildly engaging, but gives my mind time to wander a bit.

I think AI tools that claim to remove boring tasks are missing the point a bit. While I’m checking each replace and making sure it makes sense I’m reinforcing my understanding of what is happening around the code, and also giving time for the back of my brain to get on with planning the next part of the development. If all you think about are the complicated and challenging bits of a project you can end up feeling a bit burned out after a while. A bit of boring work might not be relaxing as such but it can give time for the rest of your thought processes to catch up.