Stay Grounded

This is a term I borrowed from Zen (meditation in general, actually). I'm sure other people have other terms for it, but I can't think of how to search for them.

In meditation, it means "forget about the lights and/or euphoric feelings and/or sudden remarkable revelations and/or ESP (or delusions of such, as you may believe) and remember the point of meditation." I use it in programming to mean "don't stray too far from working code." I've watched a programmer code an entire AbstractFactory and target class--a driver for an SQL back end--without writing a single lick of code which actually calls it.

How far you can successfully stray from working code is a function of the programmer's level of expertise.

In meditation, being unable to StayGrounded is generally a sign of strong ego attempting to distract the meditator.

In programming, being unable to StayGrounded is likely a symptom of the programmer having an unclear picture of how something will be used or what it is supposed to do or what the entire project is for (or a bad programmer).

Is this the same as to StayCentered??

Of course, if you are working on exposed high-voltage circuitry; StayGrounded is generally bad advice. (Being grounded through a 1M resistor for ESD reasons is OK, but a low-impedance path to ground is a PoorChoice?).

Some of those heavily involved in NewAgeSpirituality? often have problems with this. In the rush to "achieve higher levels of energy" they end up getting kind of flaky. While they may be "calm and centered" under normal circumstances, when reality sends a real problem (like a car accident, money issues, or a weird memory corruption error), they crack almost instantly, and all the centeredness vanishes. I've seen it enough times to call it a pattern. -- LayneThomas