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On Tuesday 12 October 2004 7:08 pm, Alex Charrett wrote:
In order to produce that code you've had to make a decision to do that over, say (for a random example), having a bath. Therefore the cost to you of writing that piece of code is not having a bath.
The distinction here is that your logic assumes that only one task can be done at a time. I don't have an off-switch for all this code - it just keeps on popping up. If I was in the bath or at work - anywhere at all - I get ideas and I formulate the code. It doesn't stop just because I'm doing something else.
You can't disagree with basic economic principles by shouting wrong at people.
OK, my message perhaps got misinterpreted, it was more in kind of incredulity and humour. I wasn't meaning to shout anyone down. However, the economic argument is not universal. Not everything in life comes down to economics, not everything in life is costed. (Even the credit card companies agree on that one.) Some things in life really are free of all financial cost. Otherwise, what did we do before money was invented?
It's not rubbish, as I've said opportunity cost is not necessarily financial but you sacrifice the ability to do something else in that piece of time.
That is simply not true. I do not sacrifice the ability because the two coincide in the same timeframe. I work on the code in my head whilst doing other things - very rarely does it occupy my mind to the point that I cannot afford to be distracted at all.
Untrue. You are still treating this as a commodity, it's not, it's speech.I am paying for my time writing this email by not drinking a beer.
Why not have a beer beside the computer?? (I do!) :-) Anyway, that exchange may exist but it does not have a financial cost - the absence of expenditure is not income. You've still got that beer to drink later, the choice of not drinking it has not increased or decreased the monetary cost of the beer. The act OF drinking it DOES decrease the value of the now empty can, but, again, the absence of loss is not gain (you don't get an extra can just by delaying the drinking!). Besides, beer is a physical object, this whole premise is built on non-physical, abstract, objects like speech, code and emotion. There's a lot of confusion here about terms - use of the words 'paying' and 'cost' opposed to 'choice' and 'activity'. A choice of activity does not necessarily involve any monetary cost. This is all occurring in my 'off-hours' - relaxation time, time required by my human brain to relax and think. No-one can avoid the need for relaxation, it just so happens that I relax by programming, amongst other choices - none of which cost me any money OR lose the opportunity for pecuniary income. The time would have to be given to relaxation anyway or we'd all go insane. We aren't robots, we need time-off but what we do with that time-off varies. No matter what we choose to do during that time, it is not time lost to possible income streams because we are humanly incapable of sustaining life without relaxation. Relaxation is free of monetary cost (although many choose to spend vast sums on relaxation, it is not necessary for relaxation itself) and therefore what we choose to do within that time can also be completely free of monetary cost.
You have a choice not to spend time in front of your computer typing that code into it.
And waste all these ideas? What good does that do? There's nothing healthy about keeping things bottled in. Expressing the ideas in code is relaxation - so I'm relaxing and programming at the same time. Whichever way you see it, my production of code does not have a financial cost. It may rarely exchange one activity for another and more commonly continue during another activity, but as neither involve income or expenditure, there is no financial cost. e.g. If I chose to just stroke the cat instead of type code, the act of stroking the cat has not cost me any money. Yet whilst stroking the cat I'll be thinking and thinking involves code. Sure, feeding the cat is different but that's dealing with material objects - material objects always seem to cost money. Code is not a material object, it is not a physical object, it's speech. Talking to the cat, talking to the computer, neither costs any money.
You could do something else with that time, the cost to you is the other things you could do in that time.
Keeping my sanity? (Perhaps the NHS should pay me to program so that I don't incur costs for medicines!) The cost to me is nothing because I am incapable of using that time for income - I need to relax and cannot earn money 24/7. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.codehelp.co.uk/ http://www.dclug.org.uk/ http://www.isbn.org.uk/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/ http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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