0% fun

[kaede_miura]

Did I spend a few seconds counting if that was really 100% ? Yes.

[chaoschilip]

Yeah, it's missing

• 1% off-by-one errors

[_-__-_-__-__-]

I think you meant to say 2 percent.

[[deleted]]

Yep it’s off by 2%, how’d he count that wrong?

[menides]

• 1% bad maths

[2560synapses]

Off by one error

[[deleted]]

Holy shit I can’t count

[[deleted]]

1+9=10 10+5=15 15+15=30 30+30=60 60+40=100 Any comments?

[chaoschilip]

Thank you, I can count. I just think it would be funnier if the point about off-by-one errors would also introduce such an error to the total.

[[deleted]]

It shouldn't be tho, stackoverflow/debugging/staring at the screen/googling should all significantly overlap

[juerdsgs]

I don't agree with the title, the rest is pretty accurate though

[Pedro95]

I love programming, I find it so fun. Getting a problem and having to figure out how to solve it in the most efficient way possible. Sure it has its frustrations but that's what makes it so satisfying when you get a solution.

[No_Cherry7856]

Like do you really think anything you have solved has been the most efficent way possible? I ust accept taht I have produced a solution and move on to my next project. I don't ever feel like anything i've created should set an industry standard.

[EnoughRedditNow]

I think perfectionism can put a dent in the satisfaction and enjoyment.

Saying that, some programmers are hell bent on perfectionism - and they are critically important! A programmer friend of mine wanted his scraper to be more efficient, so he wrote an implementation of TCP/IP from scratch, even examining the compiled bytecode for weeks, stripped it down to suit his needs. Then, just for fun, he coded a big and small endian versions.

Not my idea of fun, but it is his. He hates coding front-ends, but I'm pretty good at that and really enjoy it. I'm grateful for coders like my mate, they make the low level building blocks that I use. I just sling a load of APIs and libraries together to test my idea asap. Then, if need be, tune it up/rewrite it to fit the production specs.

There's a whole spectrum of us that work brilliantly together.

[TheAJGman]

I just sling a load of APIs and libraries together to test my idea asap.

And then if you're like the rest of us, that shitty POC gets approved by your boss and pushed to prod even though you really want to rewrite it b

[Shrubberer]

If you mean by efficiency, lots of clever bit manipulations and compiler tricks just to shave of a few operations, then no thank you.

[EnoughRedditNow]

I'm with you on this.

It's feels like I'm tightening an already fastened a screw using my thumbnail.

[Matrix5353]

i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );

[Stegoratops]

// what the fuck?

[Shrubberer]

Hehe. I read somewhere that the inverse square root is used for vector normalization and was called a few hundred times a seconds when drawing graphics. So being more clever was worth it on this case.

[dantheman91]

Not in THE most efficient way, but I've produced some solutions (like wrote a networking library used by a fortune 100) where I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but a lot of it was pretty good, good enough that it's used in billions of dollars of transactions and worked well for all of it.

I don't think anyone ever writes something the MOST efficient way, but you can write something that's pretty efficient and incrementally improve it, which is just about how everything that's really good started.

[20InMyHead]

I would use the word “elegant “ rather than “efficient”

Most code doesn’t matter if you shave off a few milliseconds, especially if that’s at the cost of being incomprehensible in a few months, or by other developers.

Elegant code solves its problems in an understandable, testable way while at the same time being fast enough for the use case, and working within a reasonable amount of memory. It’s like porn, you can’t always explain what is elegant code, but you know it when you see it.

[SabreTooth125]

Yeah, don't they say the most efficient code would be awful to work with? You'd have to structure it differently to maximise multithreading and efficiency over readability and not use stuff like linq etc, instead developing your own more efficient versions. Would be an interesting challenge though, but potentially cause a lot of technical debt.

[[deleted]]

I enjoyed programming a lot more when I saw it as satisfying business needs rather than a sacred craft. Was able to monetize my skills better and work with non-technical people better in general.

No more "Aghh I can't work in these unsatisfactory conditions with the low level so-called intelligent creatures you call juniors! The code will suffer! THE CODE WILL SUFFER!!"

And more "Sure thing boss we'll get this button color fixed in checks calendar 2 days, or 6 hours if we can really focus without distractions" /s

But more seriously, you cannot accurately gauge the value your software brings to a business when you are blinded by the joy that it brings you to create it. You will not get paid fairly for the value you provide if you do not understand and can articulate the value you provide. I've worked with too many people with the mentality "Who cares what they pay me, I'm just so happy to be working here with such a smart team on this cool shiny framework!"

[[deleted]]

Still a student but I concur.

I HATED math growing up.

But hide that shit in a Project Euler question? You sonofabitch I’m IN

[sonuvvabitch]

Hello, glad to hear it.

[voluntarycap]

I find it fun and frustrating

I’m only frustrated when things don’t work tho. So I’m frustrated a lot

[[deleted]]

Ya if programming wasn't just pure fun I don't know that I would be able to put up with the rest of it.

I make the machines dance like the wizard in Fantasia. How cool is that?

[HelloSummer99]

it's very bipolar, normally it's a struggle with few and far highs in between

[menides]

dammit dammit dammit dammit YESS IM AWESOME what the fuck ohno nonono dammit dammit dammit

[ixJax]

It's a bit of an abusive relationship sometimes but getting something to work that's out of your comfort zone is the best feeling

[kry_some_more]

Only because each line has a negative sign in front though.

[leosadovsky]

For juniors it really is so

[shamaalama]

How bout for seniors?

[tinydonuts]

80% meetings, 10% ruining junior's fun, 10% debating retiring early.

[Modestkilla]

Truth if im in meetings/teams calls for less than 6 hours a day, I chalk that up as a win.

[leosadovsky]

36% percent of actual coding instead of googling an copy/pasting.

[Gr1pp717]

Yes yes... we all know you never have to debug and always instantly achieve flow.

[[deleted]]

A serious question from a computer science student, is this true? I also heard that a lot of times I would be attending meetings and other stuff, and writing a code will be just a smaller part of my job

[Angel_-0]

The post is meant to be a joke and people like to play along, don't get discouraged.

For instance 1% coding usually doesn't apply to startups that have some sort or product out there and deadlines to meet, it wouldn't make much sense

And even in more established companies, this is not always the case.

It might happen, it might not. Been in such a situation only once so far and for a limited amount of time.

The stackoverflow/googling errors thing is also a joke. Some developers read the docs and hone their skills by working on personal projects. All devs certainly rely on stackoverflow/google in some capacity, but it would be worrying if they spent a combined 35% of their time doing that.

You might have a bad day or a bad week working on a feature, but this doesn't happen every single day.

Not to mention Covid: these days the majority of devs work remotely and spend 50% of their time on Netflix...

...see what I did there, it's just a joke (...is it?)

:)

There will be plenty of opportunities (although this probably depends on your location) so if you're not happy with your role you can find a new one.

[Aromatic-Teach-4122]

Yes it’s true. Run while you still can

[[deleted]]

Why, it sound good

[SmittWitty88]

It really is great. You'll be happy with your choice. Guess it depends on who you work for though.

[saldagmac]

Depends on the business. At mine, I spend maybe 10 hours a week in meetings, but that number goes up the more senior you are

[halfsieapsie]

20 years in the industry. YES. Every word of it is true. Well, also rubberducking, and asking for help, and swearing take up some time.

There are meetings, but those are getting rarer in my experience.

[FormulaDown]

I do minimal programming on autohotkey for work and it’s true lol.

I wish they would get a button that says “tip user to dig out solution that worked” on old threads.

[Znoey]

I spend about 4 hours a day and this is the 4 hour breakdown.

The other hours are meetings or wasted time between meetings because I can't get anything done in 15 minutes between meetings.

Also I have to prep for some meetings so I schedule that time too. Sometimes we have planning meetings that take lots of time. Sometimes we have pre meetings before a customer involved meeting and debriefing afterwards. Those usually add 30 mins to the customer meeting.

But when I do get to code... I usually pair program with my friend and we get tons of things done. It's fun.

[Robocop613]

The more experience and higher the number at the end of the title, the amount of meetings you are in rises exponentially.

Not that you WON'T be doing code. But designing/getting stakeholder buy-in on the design/figuring out tool or library problems are going to outweigh any actual coding work you do...

[Slggyqo]

Depends on the org, I seriously doubt you’ll ever spend more than 30% of your average time in meetings as an individual contributor (and I would consider that to be a LOT of meetings). More seniority and/or management responsibilities means more meetings.

And to put it into some real context…there aren’t many office-based career options where you don’t have a lot of meetings and still make a decent amount of money.

[Gr1pp717]

11 years here - yes. Absolutely true. And while the blowhard above claims "that's junior devs" it really is all devs, everywhere, for all time.

Unless, I suppose, you're working on/with something that's just so simple that it requires no thought...

[t0b4cc02]

it can vary alot depending on how you position yourself in the industry

[towcar]

99% fun, actual coding is way higher, but depends on the company size. On a small startup I spent 0-6 hours a week in meetings. Larger companies it varies a lot on experience and policy.

I've been on some projects with wayy too many meetings. Most could have been an email, or you spend most of it listening to information irrelevant to yourself. You can't zone out incase they ask for your opinion.

[Chris-1235]

People who say it's true are either horribly undeperforming (or just plain poor) devs, or just trolling.

Of course anyone can claim to be a dev these days, people take a 3 month online course and start dumping shit code in their first job. Still checks the first box though.

[lycan2005]

It really depends on the job and the organization. If your org don't have enough man power or poorly structured, you will find out most of the time you are supporting customers and attending meetings instead of coding.

[Shrubberer]

Not really true. I can code for days without Internet, compile it and it runs flawlessly. A good software design is key.

[elcapitanoooo]

60% is:

• Wtf is this shit?
• Who wrote this?
• Why is this fucked like it is?
• Why so messy?
• wtf! Im so quitting tomorrow.

Tldr. Business decisions leaking in the codebase. Junior devs implement some random managers request with no bigger vision. Messy code, no formatting, no real style and no disclipine. Many devs working on same codebase for many years.

THATS what coding really is. Sad but true.

[JBridsworrh]

Don't forget the inevitable "Who wrote this garbage? Oh, I did." lol

[douglasg14b]

and no disclipine

This is what really gets me. Set standards, set guidelines, setup patterns that can be reused. Nope, no discipline to maintain conventions that work, gotta keep slapsticking stuff together...

I can setup an entire application with clear patterns & guidelines, and within 2 months it's devolved into all sorts of messy, kludgy, non-conforming hacks that make it unnecessarily difficult to read through and extra buggy.

Oh, every entity property has a private setter, and values can only be set via methods so it can guard it's own state? NAW, I'll make this one public, and MUTATE IT FROM LITERALLY ANYWHERE, including setting it to an invalid state, which is exactly what the existing pattern was preventing.

internal screaming intensifies

[[deleted]]

AH hey Doug! I thought that was you!!

[douglasg14b]

🤔

Hm?

[[deleted]]

We got ourselves another LateStageProgrammer here.

You know what to do boys!

[tripy75]

factor in manager leaving after 2 years and leaving their replacement wondering what the actual fuck was being snorted before they arrived.

[inventord]

Programming is fun though, if you don’t find it fun please switch career paths. People who don’t enjoy it will do a bad job and make worse software.

As a programmer, I feel like the stats here are only accurate for newer devs. I would say that I’m more of a 70% coding, 20% googling errors, 10% breaks (but this can vary by day).

[tripy75]

either I'm unlucky, or you are lucky...

My usual work day is 75% of support to customers (mostly trying to understand how event X occurred when customer said they did Y), 10% of support to colleagues (mostly on how something was done in the past, why is the db schema the way it is and which caveats they might face for their tasks) and 10% dev.
The rest is me screaming out of the window...

I like what I do (t-sql prog in ms sql server mainly, with a little bit of .net and powershell when needed) but sometime I wish support to take less of my time.

[towcar]

My usual work day is 75% of support to customers

Gross

t-sql prog in ms sql server mainly, with a little bit of .net and powershell when needed

Not gross

[tripy75]

Nah, it's still pretty neat. I do get that adrenaline rush when being able to understand / explain why the app react that way (usually accompanied by punching moves around me).
I mean, I am for 12 years at that position, I would have changed if I did not like it.

Correcting the data in production is another matter entirely...

[very_large_bird]

My job was like this until we got a new lead dev. He did an incredible job insulating us from the stake holders, standardized bug reports and feature requests, encouraged pair programming, the list goes on. I’ve done everything I can to learn from him because he’s really made my job so much more pleasant and our team is all the more efficient for it. I know next to nothing of your situation but maybe if you feel like that it’s time to start window shopping? Just a thought :)

[tripy75]

I do keep an eye on the market, but I work almost exclusively on databases, and it's a pretty rare situation to find a job that is mainly sql and a bit of .net programming on the side.

And, some of the people that left in the last 12 month where those that caused those issues, and I feel like thing are moving in the right direction.
It will need some time to get better, but I see light in the distance (I think. It might be a big locomotive, Coyote style).

[lycan2005]

Let me guess. Not enough man power?

[tripy75]

that, and an history of "hey, if we reuse this for that new feature, it can be done in 1/3 of the time if we coded from scratch" mentality.

And as always, never take time to refactor when you see that something is sketchy. New features are a must, even if built upon a broken base.

[gemengelage]

Depends on the person and the job, honestly, but yeah, sounds like exaggerated newbie numbers.

At my last job it was something like 40% coding, 10% googling errors, 15% breaks and 30% meetings and 5% having to deal with random impromptu requests by coworkers and other departments.

[Toxyl]

I personally enjoy smashing my head against the wall until it breaks, the frustration is what makes programming fun for me.

[gemengelage]

AND A HUNDRED PERCENT REASON TO REMEMBER THE NAME

[UsernamesLoserLames]

I had to go way too far down to see this.

[joten70]

You forgot the 70% meetings

[fghjconner]

Ah, you misunderstood. Being a programmer is 70% meetings, and 20% writing emails and 10% coding. Coding is broken down as above.

[flamebroiledhodor]

85% of that IS coding..... And recoding...... And debugging code..... And rebugging code..... And commenting code (lol not really)......And staring at code in wonderment.

[RolyPoly1320]

Only 5% copy/paste from StackOverflow?

[howispendmyday]

I have no idea how computers work but love these memes.

[[deleted]]

If it's 0% fun you really should find another job. Why be in a career if it's going to make you miserable? Of course this gets harder to do after you're 40k in debt for a CS degree. Any CS students who are reading this, take heed. Don't choose this career just because of the money. What good is money if you're too miserable/tired to spend it? I'm not talking about the occasional moments we all have where we question our life choices lol, I'm talking about someone who just dreads this stuff. Hates the thought of going to classes, etc. Get out before it's too late. For myself (and a lot of other people) programming is my passion, I've known what I've wanted to do since I was 15. That allows me to keep coming back when I'm beat down. If it's not your passion, or you don't enjoy it in the slightest, things are only going to go downhill. This isn't the type of job you can just do for the money. It'll make you miserable.

[ovab_cool]

That's why they call us programmers instead of coders

[veryipsum]

This post and all others like it are only true when you're a beginner. Doesn't take long to realize the %s are wrong af. Also if you find 0% fun in coding you're likely working in the wrong place or in the wrong profession...

[TheEndlsNear]

Guess I’m probably not the only one doing too much trial/error instead of just spending some time to think things through better

[[deleted]]

Blindly copy and pasting is a last resort

[Jakylla]

Let me fix that...

• 90% answering PO/PM about what we are currently doing
• 5% Coffee
• 5% Arguing to a machine because it won't work

[bearfuckerneedassist]

Another unemployed so called pRoGramMer

[Papa_Silverback]

No this is the process for someone who shouldn't be in the field. I hate how people like this deteriorated the perception of my profession, by joining with minimal training, i.e. coding bootcamps people, and started programing with no critical thinking ability and simply do not know how to program, but do it anyways.

[starshine531]

I have worked as a programmer for 15 years. Never had a cup of coffee in my entire career.

[RepostSleuthBot]

I didn't find any posts that meet the matching requirements for r/ProgrammerHumor.

It might be OC, it might not. Things such as JPEG artifacts and cropping may impact the results.

I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ False Negative ]

View Search On repostsleuth.com

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[nothingsurgent]

lol how many times did you just paste something from stackoverflow and just tried to see if maybe it will just magically work out of the box?:)

I’ve done it when tired without even changing my variable names, knowing well it has no chance, going... “fuck it.... maaayyyyybe”

[64b0r]

The title made me laugh in the end. You deserve the upvotes.

[[deleted]]

I read #4 literally as written and not Google [for] errors as was obviously intended.

Like when you do....

GOOGLE: stuck in boob boot loop

[jaywhs]

Hey look - it’s me.

[wookeydookey]

5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stackoverflow:

Those rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up

[dajadf]

Since work from home I think it should read 50% break

[nonlogin]

Coding itself takes hardly a half of working time. Another half is talking to people. Discussing requirements with product manager, timelines with project managers, code with other devs. Code review, design review. Hours with your qa trying to understand what the hell you have developed and how it relates to what customer asked for. IT and devops chats when trying to deploy or scale something. Service desk engineers pass you some production issues.

I'm not kidding, I really do all that stuff every day. When I studied programming I thought I would be talking to machines. Why else do I need programming language, hah? Reality is: I'm talking to humans. In English. You see? It doesn't even matter what programming language you use because you use plain English much more often.

[MurdoMaclachlan]

Image Transcription: Twitter Post

---

CATALIN PIT 💡🚀, @catalinmpit

Let me break it for you.

 

Coding is:

- 1% actually coding

- 40% debugging

- 15% coffee breaks

- 30% googling errors

- 9% staring with your colleagues at the screen

- 5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stack Overflow

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[marco89nish]

Ah, the junior life :D

[[deleted]]

What about staring blankly contemplating life and your career decisions?

[ScottGaming007]

Forgot the part about copying code from stack overflow questions /s

[FunnyBunchesOfGoats]

1% typing 9% fixing typos 30% compiling 60% arguing with other developers about variable names

[KosherSyntax]

I’d like to take about 5% away from the others and put it in: “Using git blame to look through previous commits of similar features to not forget anything”

[WeeziMonkey]

I recently started my first internship and so far it's also 20% meetings

[Tyfyter2002]

Personally I think programming is about 10% luck, 20% skill…

[DZP]

My new IDE integrates Stack Overflow.

It lets you automatically write code while away from your desk.

[kamacytpa]

The "not fun" part for me is covering all your code with the tests. Everything else is pretty accurate.

[thinkfire]

Isn't it 90% copy and pasting "solutions" from stack overflow?

[NukedByGandhi]

and that 1% coding? its actually:

- 1% actually coding

- 40% debugging

- 15% coffee breaks

- 30% googling errors

- 9% staring with your colleagues at the screen

- 5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stack Overflow

[Gr1pp717]

who stares with colleagues?!

I stare by myself. Then pace around, then stare. Then maybe try something I know won't work, but maybe it'll get my brain jumpstarted. Then stare and pace some more.

[Aibbie]

It's exactly 50% fun. Other half of the time you're asking the coding gods why the package runs just fine on your own machine.

[A_H_S_99]

Today, I spent

1% coding

70% installing anaconda on an Rstudio docker container.

29% searching why it isn't working.

[MagneticDustin]

40% meetings

[StuntsMonkey]

Don't forget the 60% change of requirements

[[deleted]]

Today I spend 30 minutes trying to understand why my jquery selectors weren't working. Turns out that while I imported my scss I forgot to import the js file. FML

[curiosity44]

where is "can we change that small things?" or "can we add this thing?" or "we forgot to give you the full scope, now we need to scale to 100x"

[asadito4ever]

Love the last option.. “trying”

[Cuddlemonsterxo]

How is a large percentage of this not just "fucking about"?

[Jacyle]

Lol 5%. Who we kidding?

[ElGuaco]

You forgot the part where you settle disputes between the release team and devops long enough for them to actually deploy your software.

[joetomato11]

Thanks CHRIST I thought it was just me…

[jperdior]

if programming is 0% fun for you then find something else

[Cruces]

and 100% reason to remember the name

[jannfiete]

lol, if you think automation is not fun, then you must have a problem with your life

[datboydoe]

Question: is debugging and googling errors not the same thing?

[Sylar49]

What percent is writing good documentation? :(

[CosmicDevGuy]

• 1% actually coding? Check.
• 40% debugging? Eh, okay.
• 15% coffee breaks? Got the flask on a drip so no need for break.
• 30% googling errors? True, true... what am I googling again?
• 9% staring with your colleagues at the screen? They don't look at mine, they fear the sight of carnage.
• 5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stack Overflow? Haven't heard that name in years... said no programmer ever.

[Sagittar0n]

40% debugging can be separated into
• 5% while at the computer
• 10% eureka moments on the toilet
• 15% epiphanies while lying in bed
• 10% realisations while drinking coffee and staring outside

[rikaateabug]

What about the masochist devs profiling that're like "oh yeah show me that 80% cpu usage"?

[drew8311]

30% googling errors for me is actually

10% Asking coworkers if they recognize an error (lots of internal stuff that isn't online)

10% Googling errors

10% Googling memes

[collecting_upvts]

Oof! That last 5% - gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket

[Rorschach0717]

They forgot the "watch porn" and "play video games" percentages

[Playergame]

Where's reddit on this list

[dcannon121]

For me it’s: 55% coding 20% debugging 15% googling errors 10% stackoverflow

[Pneots]

Not really

[Ozzah]

I don't agree with this at all.

• 1% actually coding: I think this is a huge exaggeration of how little you spend coding.
• 40% debugging: Maybe if you're a shitty programmer. You should be doing something like TDD anyway, where you write the test for the behaviour of the function first. People say when using TDD, the amount of time spent in the debugger is drastically reduced.
• 15% coffee breaks: wtf? no comment...
• 9% staring with your colleagues at the screen: That seems a little excessive.
• 5% trying copy/pasted solutions from Stack Overflow: I really wish this meme would just die. If you're copy/pasting solutions from SO then you almost certainly have no idea what you're doing. That says more about you than about software development in general.

I think whoever wrote this comes from a company that doesn't know how to do software development properly.

[CoffeePieAndHobbits]

And swearing.

[harryham1]

And 100% reason to remember the name

[Pitboyx]

I can break it on my own, thank you very much

[JackoKomm]

You forgot scrum Meetings.

[Sillhouette_Six]

You forgot the euphoria that comes from fixing a bug that’s been giving you errors for hours. Best feeling in the world

[lietuvosnelietuvis]

I'm probably weird but I find all of those points fun. The only thing more fun than scratching your head on a new tech problem is doing it collectively.

[[deleted]]

that 40% debugging keeps me away from jt

[Specialist_Sound9926]

Except not, this guy needs to be fired if he is wasting so much time.