Patience

When we think of patience we tend to think of people that are calm, cool, collected, and can handle quite a bit of frustration before they get wound up or even stressed.  Stress in itself is an issue that I could write a book on so we will side step that for now.  When it comes to patience however, one of the things I find fascinating is that patience is not constant.  People who possess it do not do so universally.  By this I mean, they do not have the same level of patience for every issue, and the deviation in the range can vary quite significant from issue to issue.

I first learned to program when I was 6 years old, and I had my first computer when I was 5 which was a command line interface.  From such a young age with such limited technology, I have grown up with an exposure to technology that at times isn't helpful when things go wrong, isn't descriptive, and above all else, can be incredibly frustrating.  That exposure however has led me to have quite a long tolerance when it comes to technology trying my patience.  I'll endure much more than the average user, and again this is something most programmers share, because programming by its very nature is trial and error.  The amount of repetition that is involved in programming is immense, while many languages and libraries exist to try and reduce this overhead, it can't be avoided entirely.

I recently helped out a friend who got a new computer and one of the things I noticed quite quickly was how short his tolerance was for technology that tries his patience.  Eventually we got things sorted but he was for giving up at many points in the process.  The reason I find this fascinating is because there's no easy way to determine who will and won't show patience before the fact.  He is tech-minded, and does work with computers, even has a degree in computer science, but his remit is decidedly limited to software - when it comes to hardware it seems the patience and tolerance is the inverse of that for software.

I find this correlation interesting, but I don't think it is causation as my own personal experience would contradict that theory as I am comfortable with both hardware and software elements - although there is a definite preference for software.  It does make me wonder why this is the case though.  Why can we show resounding patience for some things but for others our patience can be non-existent?