JargonFile/entries/juggling eggs.txt
2014-04-26 15:52:28 +01:00

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juggling eggs
vi. Keeping a lot of state in your head while modifying a program. Don't bother me now, I'm juggling eggs , means that an interrupt is likely to result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic 1975 first-contact SF novel The Mote in God's Eye , by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity. It is possible that this was intended as tribute to a less colorful use of the same image in Robert Heinlein's influential 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. See also hack mode and on the gripping hand.