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Prioritising like a computer scheduler

A bug in NASA’s Pathfinder Mars lander caused the transmission to stop. The bug in the scheduler made it procrastinate.

All the time prioritising work is the time you are not doing work. The time it takes, according to computer science, to prioritise a list of tasks is proportional to the square of the number of tasks. In 2003, Linux ran into a problem where ranking task importance took more time than doing the tasks. Therefore, spend more time doing the process. In other words, overboard optimisation is destructive.

Context switch comes with cost. There is a tradeoff between productivity and responsiveness. Minimise context switch to maximise productivity. Find balance. Group them (or interrupt coalescing in computer science jargon) can help improve efficiency.


References:

  1. Brian Christianm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbdXTMnOmE