The Waffle House Code Engine

I spend a lot of time at my local Waffle House writing code. I know, not the most up-scale choice, but unfortunately a necessary one considering the lack of other good options these days.

For those unfamiliar with it, Waffle House is a very large chain of greasy-spoon diners. It is nearly a national chain, but there are a few areas that haven't been graced with a waffle house yet but most places have something similar.

Waffle houses are very small restaurants seating around 25 people comfortably. They are usually located on major interstates or within major cities. They are also notoriously dirty places, with generally crappy food guaranteed to cause heat disease nearly instantly. The regular clients of such places range from retired old men to drunken motards with a lot of not much in-between.

On the plus side though, waffle houses are cheap places to eat (more or less), they serve great coffee. For their employees the house pays weekly, and they pay in cash too. This makes it the ideal job for drug-addicts, escaped convicts, illegal immigrants, and anyone whose idea of a "savings" account includes a mattress and some coupon books.

It wasn't always this way for me.

I used to hang out in higher-class establishments like IHOP or Denny's. Hey! I didn't say "high" class, just higher class than the awful waffle. But I'm a smoker, and I love sitting around with my laptop writing code while drinking coffee and smoking at 3am, and for that there just aren't many class-establishments to choose from.

It just works for me.

I've tried this at home, but all that mess about having to get up and make coffee, pour it myself when my cup runs empty... uug... and I don't smoke in the house so I have to actually go out to the garage when I want a smoke. Also, at home I have all my other stuff handy like the TV, a fast internet connection, and a lot of neglected chores that need doing.

So its easy to get distracted.

At the office, things are better. But there I have co-workers that need working with, my end-users have questions to ask, bugs to report, and just general problems that need solutions. Plus there is my boss who needs status updates and has new ideas and features to propose and some other projects to discuss. Then there are meetings and the occasional talking to the customer too.

In short:

if(codeAtHome == null && codeAtWork < optimal)
{
    DoWorkAtWaffleHouse();
}

So while I get code done at the office, and less often even at home, I still do my best work after-hours in places where there are people getting paid to look after me. Plus the staff makes good entertainment when you need to take a break from the screen for a bit.

But the anti-smoking movement is on its way, and I'm sure it wont last much longer, every year there is more and more political noise in the direction of banning smoking in all public places. At this point it may just be a matter of time. So once I either quit smoking (which I'm planning to do this year) or they finally ban it, the only real thing that changes is that I'll have more options for where to hang out.