“To sleep: perchance to dream…”  Laying aside Shakespeare’s morbid meaning, sleep turns out to be fairly important for programmers, and not only because of the perenial lack thereof.  Programming, at least at my level, tends to be mostly about the gestalt; something that I gather is the same for musicians.  Ask a skilled pianist to concentrate entirely on the mechanics and he’ll be sure to screw it up.  Let him forget the details, though, and the result can often seem like nothing less than magic. Continue reading →