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posted by martyb on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-just-stand-there dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:52PM (1 child)

    by mhajicek (51) on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:52PM (#545227)

    If the experiment lasts one day, sure. But the next day productivity will be lower the whole day. I've worked 70 hour weeks, and by the end I could barely function. My health also deteriorates.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:22PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:22PM (#545406)

    One of the aspects of "death march" projects is that the managers panic and press the "EVERYBODY WORK OVERTIME!" button. And the result is that the developers are tired. Which means they make more mistakes, and get slower. So the bosses, unaware of their mistake, say, "EVERYBODY WORK MORE OVERTIME!". This cycle can get to the point where the entire development and QA team is sleeping in the office because they can't drive safely.

    Eventually, of course, developers start quitting. And the project often doesn't get finished, which managers chalk up to those lazy developers who weren't willing to work 120 hours per week (for those keeping score at home, that means they sleep about 5-6 hours a night, eat, and work, and have no time for anything else such as showering).

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.