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How Many Hours a Week Can You Program?
An anonymous reader writes "How many hours a week should a full-time programmer program? Trying to program anywhere near 40 wears me out. On a good week, I can do 20. Often, it is around 10 or 15. I'm talking about your programming session at the console, typing — including, of course, stopping and thinking for a minute, but not meetings, reading programming books, notes, specifications, etc., which by comparison feel like lunch breaks. I rarely get called to meetings (which is good) but that means to keep my brain from overheating I spend several hours a week surfing the web (usually reading tech news but also a few stops on Facebook, email, etc.). I should add that I am interrupted a few times per day. Me and another guy maintain an intranet site of a couple dozen web apps for an IT department, so we work on a few different things: phone calls, bug fixes, feature adds, as well as writing new web apps from the ground up, all in a day's work. And I know that wears a person out more than if they had just one project to work on. I wonder if programming is like mental sprinting, not walking, so you can only do it in bursts. Am I normal or stealing?"
He means actual coding sir. He said not reading specifications, meetings, etc. You know, the majority of the actual work being done in software development? Simple fact is we do little coding when compared to the other aspects of the job. That's why I tell kids coming out of college with CS degrees - get ready to learn, again. Because if they think it's all coding they'll be sorely mistaken. I spend more time trying to work with customers learning the domain and getting what they need out of them then I do actual coding. Meetings are required but sometimes lengthy. Documentation takes little brain power but is also required. Deployments are not very exciting but again, required. QA processes can be tedious too. Etc. I do spend some days coding non-stop from 9am-6pm but that's not typical, that's a spectacular day when it comes around.
That all being said, I do find myself working in a sprinting fashion as the posted does. I'll always be coding when it's time but sometimes you get a burst of speed and intelligence that you might not have every single day and you sprint ahead and make up for the times when you're not so sharp. This cycle goes on and on and it's hard for me to get around it. For instance, I had a burst of inspiration on Sunday and had more productivity in that off day then the entire week previous.
I defy anyone to focus day in and day out for years and maintain absolute focus at maximum productivity. If you can do that then you're a better developer than me and perhaps a robot.