c2.com has a wiki page with weird developer dreams.
I have this one weird developer dream that I have been trying to explain for years. I have told various people parts of it, but never really figured the whole thing out. I will try and keep this short.
Basic Theme: Information Encoded in Beer.
Background: As many of my friends know, I am a home brewer (ale). There are lots of chemical processes that occur in the production of ale. My interest in information science often makes me consciously wonder how much information could be encoded in a batch of beer.
I've had this dream, or some variation of it, maybe 10~20 times since I was in my early twenties (when it probably first occurred - maybe 10~12 years ago). It usually happens when I am very busy and near my breaking point at work.
The Dream: In the dream, I am writing/testing/debugging code, but instead of the source code / data / data base / network I/O being on a hard disk / ethernet, the information is stored/transferred via beer that I am also brewing at the same time: programming and brewing are one activity in this dream.
During the dream, I do things like set a breakpoint to just before I pitch yeast, so I can see what I am doing wrong in that step. In the debugger, I can see exact measurements of amounts of liquids, exact chemical (and germ) contents of things, etc., in the watch window. I even remember going to look in the beer to find the temporary .cs file generated by the XML Serializer.
In the memory window, I can scroll through the batch of beer to see exactly what's in there. Each "cell"/molecule is a memory location. This part is kind of abstract. Some of the materials in beer making (yeast, bacteria) are living things, which you work with at the cellular level, whereas others (maltose, water, cleaning agents, starch, enzymes) are molecules.
What the Heck Does That Mean? Who knows. I certainly don't. I think it's a neat idea - information encoded in beer.
During real brewing, measurements are a source of frustration for me. You can follow the steps you have learned, but you can't tell exactly how clean something is, how much protein sediment is left after a stage, or various other things it would be nice to measure. Some things you could measure, but you would risk contamination. Some things, it would just be impractical to measure. This may also be what I find so appealing about brewing - you can't use measurement and science to control everything - somethings you just have to know and do.
Source: Weird Developer Dreams
Originally published on Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:51:58 GMT