do serious programmers have a life?

[amanda992004]

Excluding the factors of the brain capability, i.e I am not asking
about this factor, if you are a single, aside from enjoying coding or
debugging, how do you make time to eat properly, i.e healthily w/o
spending big bucks at special healthy food places and also take care of
life's daily chores w/o feeling like a robot. Any time for social
activites with people other than programmers?

Is feeling like a robot a typical description of a programmer's life?

[Duane Bozarth]

am**********@yahoo.com wrote:

Mainly though, I rewarded good results, period. If you think
that leaving at 4:30 is best for you, and all of your work is >done and you aren't leaving your coworkers out to dry, because
you can get more work done in 6 hours if you go home and sleep
for 12, more power to you.

It would be nice if all bosses are like you as I am the type of person
who fits in that category.

In that case I would have to interject the question of why you bring up
the previous question?

Re: the original thread subject--programmers are no different than any
other class of professionals--some are workaholics, some aren't. Some
are productive, some aren't. IOW, they're people, just like doctors,
engineers, whatevers....

[amanda992004]

> why you bring up the previous question?
Well, in my experience, programming is more time consuming compared to
Chemistry (talking about grad school study of Chemistry) . If I get
stuck, I get stuck for a long time. Back then, when I wa staking Java
in Srping 2002, I didn't know about asking for help in ngs. So some
bad memory (of losing time unnecessarily) stayed with me.

Re: the original thread subject--programmers are no different than any

other class of professionals--some are workaholics, some aren't. Some
are productive, some aren't. IOW, they're people, just like doctors,
engineers, whatevers....

Well, I was talking in tiemrs of productive and responsible ones.

[Default User]

am**********@yahoo.com wrote:

Default User wrote:
<snip>

Don't feed the trolls, blah blah blah.

I wasn't going to say anything but decided to say this to you: You
are judgemental and in your trying to act like a professional, you
missed being a human.

That does not compute.


Brian

[gds]

am**********@yahoo.com wrote:

Well, in my experience, programming is more time consuming compared to
Chemistry (talking about grad school study of Chemistry) . If I get
stuck, I get stuck for a long time. Back then, when I wa staking Java
in Srping 2002, I didn't know about asking for help in ngs. So some
bad memory (of losing time unnecessarily) stayed with me.

I've never held a full-time position in any other field except
software engineering so I can't really say what other fields are
like. However, to compare software engineering with another thing I
do on the side (unpaid), perform with a chorus, I find that the
results I get from chorus tends to scale linearly with the effort I
put into it. OTOH, I find that it takes much more effort to achieve
the same kind of result in a software engineering effort (unless I am
the only developer and the things I depend upon change rarely if
ever). I find that there are often unseen complexities and also
annoying bugs that need to be fixed. These annoying bugs aren't very
interesting from a computer science standpoint but the customers/users
feel they should be fixed.

Sometimes, if people have early success they can get put on a fast
track and get to work on the high-level architecture of software
rather than be forced to fix the annoying bugs.

Read Frederick Brooks' THE MYTHICAL MAN-MONTH for more thoughts of
this type.

--gregbo
gds at best dot com

[blmblm]

In article <Fh****************@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net>,
Phlip <ph******@yahoo.com> wrote:

Baxter wrote:

It's a myth that you have to work long hours to show dedication.
Employers love it because they think they're getting something for
nothing.
Employees are hurt by it because it puts blinders on them.
The goal is "energetic work".

Each individual's ability to work energetically varies over time, and
averages over time. The average of the averages among many individuals might
be 40 hours a week, so employers should _modestly_ cap that as a _general_
hedge against burnout.

The other goal is teamwork; being there when your teammates are there. So
even if you could work late, don't. Come in fresh tomorrow, at the same time
as your teammates come.

Yipes. One of the things that always appealed to me about programming
jobs was that there was less emphasis on everyone working the same
9-to-5 hours. This is one of the things I find less than appealing
about the "pair programming" idea. I admit I haven't tried it, and
maybe if I had I'd understand how wonderful it is, worth giving up
telecommuting and flexible schedules, but .... As something of an
introvert, I'm skeptical.
Heroism is not sustainable.

Now that I agree with!

--
| B. L. Massingill
| ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

[Duane Bozarth]

gd*@best.cut.here.com wrote:

am**********@yahoo.com wrote:

Well, in my experience, programming is more time consuming compared to
Chemistry (talking about grad school study of Chemistry) . If I get
stuck, I get stuck for a long time. Back then, when I wa staking Java
in Srping 2002, I didn't know about asking for help in ngs. So some
bad memory (of losing time unnecessarily) stayed with me.

I've never held a full-time position in any other field except
software engineering so I can't really say what other fields are
like. However, to compare software engineering with another thing I
do on the side (unpaid), perform with a chorus, I find that the
results I get from chorus tends to scale linearly with the effort I
put into it. OTOH, I find that it takes much more effort to achieve
the same kind of result in a software engineering effort (unless I am
the only developer and the things I depend upon change rarely if
ever). I find that there are often unseen complexities and also
annoying bugs that need to be fixed. These annoying bugs aren't very
interesting from a computer science standpoint but the customers/users
feel they should be fixed.

Sometimes, if people have early success they can get put on a fast
track and get to work on the high-level architecture of software
rather than be forced to fix the annoying bugs.

Read Frederick Brooks' THE MYTHICAL MAN-MONTH for more thoughts of
this type.

Being an engineer who has also written a lot of software of various
types, I don't see any real difference other than in the details of the
effort. Engineering is fraught w/ complexities as is, I suspect, any
other technical field.