Save Reflexes

No, I’m not talking about [D&D](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D&D) here. It is about my tendency to save frequently when working on something, usually way too frequently.

When I was a kid, my high school teacher gave an assignment which require us to make a writing in print. Most of my friends would do it using typewriters. But because I had this old trusty IBM PC/XT, I’d do it using computer. No problem said my teacher, “Computers would be fine.”

It wasn’t an overly long assignment, but past halfway there the power went out and so there goes my work. Today, saving a simple document will only take a blink of an eye, and we won’t notice anything, but at that time saving could take a few seconds and we couldn’t do anything but wait until the saving is done. However, a lesson has been learned: save often, save early, even if it was a torture to wait a few seconds on each save.

Saving early and saving often has indeed saved (pun intended) my sanity on a few occassions. Saving often become religious doing to the point my friends often noticed the habit and asked me about it. My answer usually was in the line of “Saving often will save your life.”

Several years later, computer hardware has vastly improved, but unfortunately not with software quality, with regard to stability, at least. Operating systems crashes every time with no apparent reason. Ditto with most applications. That would mean only one thing: more reason to save often. But at least saving were no longer a torture: we had this fast hard drives and multitasking operating system, yay! Not only that, we had uniform way of saving. It was a blessing, almost all applications would use Ctrl-S or Alt-F-S for saving. And with that, my frequency of saving increased, to the point that I would save after every sentence, or less.

Several months later, most applications started to introduce this very useful feature: automatic save. That would be lessen my burden of saving right? Wrong! Saving has become a reflex. It is my way of life. I wouldn’t feel very comfortable if I didn’t do Ctrl-S or Alt-F-S myself. Had I let it save by itself, somehow I would feel the document would get eaten by some power unknown to me.

Today, we have UPSes, and even notebooks computers are equipped with batteries. Power failures is no longer an issue, batteries will give us plenty of time to save in the event of power failure. Operating systems and applications are very stable. We can let them run for months and it probably won’t crash. And applications still have this auto saving feature. The odds of losing the next paragraph is essentially nil. And yet I couldn’t let this habit go.

When I was writing this blog post, I probably had hit this ‘Save and Continue Editing’ button for at least four times, even if the odds of losing this post is essentially nil, and even if it would cost me Rp 100 (more or less) every time I hit the goddamn button.

Every file in my [Eclipse](http://www.eclipse.org/) workspace has local history consisting of revisions only seconds apart. What’s the use of that?

I probably hit Ctrl-S, Alt-F-S, :w more often than any other key combination in my whole life. Today, they probably waste more time than they save. Is there a good way to get rid of this habit?

45 comments

  1. wah, kebiasaan yang sama dong om, saya juga gitu, kalo lagi ngerjain tugas, buat ngilangin stress, jadinya kombinasi tombol2 itu diteken terus2an :D
    ~biar rada tenang sedikit :D
    ~wah pertama ya? tumben nih bisa begini

  2. Save often, yeah, but save early?! Unless you’re coding a piece of open source software, hehe.

    Some editors disallow saving to an unchanged document by disabling the save function. Maybe a little bit of negative reinforcement would help.

  3. I think, now ..we won’t worry about it. because some software has completed by autosaver specialy for microsoft product, but..we must be carefull and scedular saving, because autosaver just running in certain time, not any time..remember!

  4. Hehehe,
    Penyakitnya sama nih!
    Gimana, ya?

    Bisa nemui psikiater, pak.
    Atau bisa juga dengan hipnotherapy yang lagi naek daun.
    Atau bisa dengan mind programming sederhana:

    [1]wake up every morning
    [2]look at the mirror
     [3]say it with confidence, "don't save anything today"
     [4]increment counter with 1
     [5]if counter is less than 5 then repeat from step 3
    [6]smile
    [7]stop

  5. Alt+F+S memang untuk saving! Saya lebiht terbiasa menekan tombol itu daripada Ctrl+S yang lebih universal. Alasannya: karena ada visual feedback (menu yang muncul sesaat itu) yang memberi jaminan bahwa dokumen memang benar disimpan.

    Baru ketemu masalah kemarin, tiba-tiba Alt+F+S tidak jalan lagi! Ternyata di Ubuntu bahasa Indonesia menu File diganti menjadi Berkas. Jadinya harus tekan Alt+B+S. Musti lebih dibiasakan pakai Ctrl+S nih.

  6. Ow..yeah.. Ctrl+S is the sacred combination :)>-
    Saya juga pernah trauma waktu jaman nge-kos kerja programming udah ratusan baris lupa di save trus lampu padam..hiks… :(( *dulu blom mampu beli UPS*

  7. nah kalo gw malah kelupaan mulu, yg ada waktu listrik dikostan tiba2 padam tanpa bilang2 yg ada muarah2 ngumpat temen kost-an yg ga tau diri nyolokin air+setrikaan+komputer+tv[-x:-t:-?? (walopun cuman khilangan 1paragraf)
    mgk hrs dibiasain ctrl+s

  8. karena kebiasaan Ctrl-S, jadi sebal sendiri kalau sedang menulis posting di WordPress…. Ctrl-S, oops “Save this file as HTML ?”.

    Akhirnya draftingnya di gedit/notepad, sehingga jadi bisa Ctrl-S sepuasnya :d

    Tidak bisa percaya tombol “Save and Continue Editing”, karena sudah beberapa kali artikel lenyap; karena sewaktu tombol ini ditekan, ternyata link ke Internetnya sudah terlanjur timeout…

    Anyway, kebiasaan ini sih sebetulnya bagus; tapi Ctrl-S per kata ? hm… Priyadi syndrome ? he he

  9. OCD? :-”

    Is there a good way to get rid of this habit?

    Mmm.. gimana kalo pas lagi ngetik/kerja tangan kiri diiket di kursi aja? biar gak gatel pengen mencet Ctrl+S.. :D

  10. mencet ctrl+s sebagai shortcut untuk menyimpan perubahan pada dokumen memang bagus, tapi kalo keseringan juga (alias udah jadi kebiasaan) gak bagus juga tuh, cara nanganinnya, ya harus dengan sadar, sebelum mencet ctrl+s ucapkan dalam hati “cukup sekali aja ctrl+s nya” heheh…

  11. Bukannya yang pas itu “save early, save often” as “release early, release often”. Ato saya yang bingung? 8-|

    *Ctrl+S dulu* :)>-

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