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A bit over fifteen years ago, developer Joel Spolsky wrote:
It makes me think of those researchers who say that basically people can't control what they eat, so any attempt to diet is bound to be short term and they will always yoyo back to their natural weight. Maybe as a software developer I really can't control when I'm productive, and I just have to take the slow times with the fast times and hope that they average out to enough lines of code to make me employable.
What drives me crazy is that ever since my first job I've realized that as a developer, I usually average about two or three hours a day of productive coding. When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. I've found the same thing to be true. I feel a little bit guilty when I see how hard everybody else seems to be working, and I get about two or three quality hours in a day, and still I've always been one of the most productive members of the team. That's probably why when Peopleware and XP insist on eliminating overtime and working strictly 40 hour weeks, they do so secure in the knowledge that this won't reduce a team's output.
But it's not the days when I "only" get two hours of work done that worry me. It's the days when I can't do anything.
The writer reckons the key to a productive day of writing software lies most in just getting started at the beginning of it. Do Soylentils have tried-and-true tricks to getting into the flow of writing code, or is it always catch-as-catch-can?
(Score: 2, Informative) by riT-k0MA on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:18AM (1 child)
Strict Workflow [google.com].
I block all the distracting sites for 25 minutes while I get started on coding. Combined with earphones, there are fewer distractions. Once in the flow, distractions don't matter so much as I'm concentrating.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:38PM
I Resist the Urge to Code.
Seriously, most people start way too soon. Just don't go there.
Draw diagrams, rough chicken-scratched flow-charts (that may never see the light of day), write in the dev-book, compile lists of
programs that need to be adjusted, anything. Just don't write a line of code too soon.
Your initial understanding of the project or even a single algorithm is almost certainly flawed and incomplete. So don't work on it.
Some less critical projects ruminate in the back of my head for weeks or months before I start.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.