Everything is stupid

I'm in a bad mood.

Wait, back up.

I feel like 'efficiency' isn't so much a good recommendation as it is a life philosophy to engineers. Anyone with technical skill wants to do things in such a way so they take less time, less resources. In fact, it's a pretty easy follow-up question to any interview question. Just ask what you normally ask, and then "OK, can you do it faster? With less memory? With less resources?"

If they're good, they've already thinking of a faster way to do things. Or they can clearly explain why their way is unequivocally the fastest. If they're OK, then they begin thinking of it when you ask. They'll at least poke around a while and try things out to see if there is something they could do differently. A flat out "no" is the only wrong answer.

But that sentiment permeates from the interview question to everything else in life. Why should I take side streets if the freeway looks faster? If I cut through this parking lot, instead of walking around it, it could save me like 2 seconds on my walking commute. What other ways can I save my time, my money, my mental and physical exertion doing things that I do often?

I definitely type 9-0 when I want to microwave something for a minute & thirty seconds because it's one keypress faster than typing 1-then-3-then-0. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

The difficulty in all this comes in dealing with folks who don't think the same way. Or who don't realize that engineers think this way. Or maybe just from some group of people who are yet-to-be properly classified. These are the folks who ask you for things that you already told them. The ones who make you do the same thing you did for them over and over again, with each subsequent action having absolutely no additional consequence than the first time you did it.

I'm not expecting people to be computers. Mistakes can be made, things can be lost or forgotten. And sometimes you need to repeat yourself. But by the second or third time, the request should change from "Can you do this" to "I'm sorry to keep asking, but i need this again" and eventually to "we need to think of a better way to do this"

But no. I'm upset. Mostly because things haven't progressed past the first part. I've spent the better part of two weeks going in circles. I'm sick of it. I really am.

And it's really just a waste of my time, my resources.

It's just goddamn inefficient.