juggling eggs

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}.
    

juggling eggs

   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 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."  See also {hack mode}.

   [{Jargon File}]