3 ms·

There are some programmers who were just born to code. They can put in monster hours everyday as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool. I was lu

by smg 19y ago

There are some programmers who were just born to code. They can put in monster hours everyday as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool. I was lucky to work with one such individual at a previous job. He was just phenomenally productive and he was working way more than 80 hrs a week. He could write device drivers in days and entire file systems in weeks. If you are lucky you might get to observe someone like that. In some ways writing code to people who are good at it is almost an exhilarating and enjoyable experience. It is easy to get into the Flow and then you just loose track of time. Programming is not really a bursty activity. If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career.

staunch 19y ago
> If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career. That's like suggesting a writer should find another career because they have writers block. Why not just find a new project and/or working conditions? You even said qualified your report on monster coders with "...as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool". My experience is that great programmers are especially sensitive to what they're doing. If they can't get genuinely and deeply excited about a project you will never see them shine. I've seen some decent programmers who can churn out decent code like clockwork. As if they work in a factory pressing sheet metal. They can be pushed to work 80 hours easily, although a great programmer could probably achieve the same results in 8 minutes most of the time.
- smg 19y ago
  Sorry I was not clear about it but if you are a good programmer in today's market there is no reason for you to be working on something that you do not enjoy working on. To quote PG for once . "If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job. All the great hackers I know seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them had any choice in the matter."

by smg 19y ago

staunch 19y ago

> If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career. That's like suggesting a writer should find another career because they have writers block. Why not just find a new project and/or working conditions? You even said qualified your report on monster coders with "...as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool". My experience is that great programmers are especially sensitive to what they're doing. If they can't get genuinely and deeply excited about a project you will never see them shine. I've seen some decent programmers who can churn out decent code like clockwork. As if they work in a factory pressing sheet metal. They can be pushed to work 80 hours easily, although a great programmer could probably achieve the same results in 8 minutes most of the time.

smg 19y ago
Sorry I was not clear about it but if you are a good programmer in today's market there is no reason for you to be working on something that you do not enjoy working on. To quote PG for once . "If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job. All the great hackers I know seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them had any choice in the matter."