Realistically, it depends how much you enjoy programming. If you program a lot, you can easily hit 3k hours a year.. Most days I program 12 hours a day, most

Realistically, it depends how much you enjoy programming. If you program a lot, you can easily hit 3k hours a year.. Most days I program 12 hours a day, most weeks 6 or 7 days a week. On a day I'm feeling very motivated I'll program for 18 hours. I've been doing this for close to 10 years. Occasionally I'll take a month 'off' and gear down to 3-4 days a week, still long days. By my conservative estimates, I hit about 3500h/year. I work this much because I fucking love programming, and there's nothing I'd rather do ( other than my daily surf in the mornings, of course :)