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.