Subj : Re: do serious programmers have a life?
To   : comp.programming
From : beliavsky
Date : Wed Sep 28 2005 10:36 am

Phlip wrote:

> How many hours do you work?
>
> The myth that programmers can or should work more than 8 hours a day is
> tragic, and is responsible for an incredible amount of lost productivity,
> bugs, etc. (But heck, at least we don't cut off the wrong limb like
> overworked doctors do...)

The number of hours that one can program productively depends on the
programmer, and for a given programmer it varies from day to day (on
some days he is tired). If you usually stop working at 5pm and you
reach a natural breakpoint in your work at 4:30pm, leaving 30 minutes
early is sensible. Conversely, if at 5pm you think that 30 more minutes
of work will enable you to finish something, staying later makes sense.

Much valuable open source code is written by people who have already
put in 8 hours of work at their day job. From reading Torvalds' book
"Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" I know he was
not an 8-hours-per-day guy.

.