Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Hacker Survey

Posted by michael on from the talk-or-we'll-take-away-your-keyboard dept.

Lisa writes "A new entry in Tim O'Reilly's blog, titled "Creativity, Flow, and Joy in Programming" talks about a survey of IS developers with projects hosted by Sourceforge. The results were presented at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention last week. 60% said, 'With one more hour in the day, I would program.' 70% of the respondents volunteered that lack of sleep was the most significant cost of participation. Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that 'When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music." OSDN has a page with the survey results in PDF or HTML. Slashdot is a part of OSDN.

5 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. With a 25 hour day by bluGill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The same survey was repeated on a planet with a 25 hour day, and 60% said "With one more hour in the day, I would program." 70% of the respondents volunteered that lack of sleep was the most significant cost of participation.

    1. Re:With a 25 hour day by 3prong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Good point. Reminds me of that quote by H. Jackson Brown:
      "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

  2. The stats are most interesting by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The comparison of Paid programmers Versus the Free-prgrammers is quite interesting ... some items are flip floped.. while the basic premise is there...

    Code should be free, and widely available..

    it's kinda funny how the people actually creating believe it's stupid to lock something up so nobody can learn from it, yet those with zero crative talent (management) believe that it's a massive money-maker and must be protected better than fort-knox.

    Has anyone ever found a rea-solid argument to keep sourceocde locked up and a super secret? other than lining your own pockets?

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. Re:GET A LIFE! by twoshortplanks · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Just because you don't class what someone is doing as "having a life" doesn't mean you should call them sad for doing it. It's nice that you completely overlook the social aspect of working together with other people on a project.

    For me, if I had an extra hour in the day I'd probably spend it coding. I've not got a lot of for fun coding done this week (read any..) because I've been out in the sun (we had wonderful weather in London last weekend,) meeting up with friends, and basically enjoying myself.

    Now if I had another hour, I'd like to spend it doing something constructive. Anything wrong with that?

    --
    -- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
  4. I'll wager... by j0hn_paul · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that the 50% that
    agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    have NEVER composed music or poetry.