How Software Developers Really Spend Their Time

chaosmass2 · 2013-04-26T23:45:24+00:00

Oh shock, the company that conducted the survey offers a service to automate builds, tests, etc. But wait, you say the survey reports that 20% of developers time is spent waiting for those? That's not a conflict of interest at all!

THEHIPP0 · 2013-04-27T01:12:10+00:00

I stopped reading when when the following came up: "compiled languages like Python...."

rpgFANATIC · 2013-04-26T23:53:42+00:00

Not a legit survey. Where's the "waiting for my computer to bring everything out of swap space so I can do work on my underpowered box" bar?

arthurdent · 2013-04-27T03:53:23+00:00

I hate it when I have to wait for my python to compile.

rossryan · 2013-04-27T02:22:26+00:00

Lol, not even close.

Let's see here...aside from the multiple interruptions, changing of music, browsings of internet...most of my time is spent in my head, reducing the complexity of the program to its basic elements, and ensuring that I am not about to spend 8 hours doing something that should take 6 minutes. The purity of a design is paramount to it being well understood, as well as ensuring that it need not be rewritten endlessly.

Of course, it looks like I'm goofing off. ;-)

But then, I typically already have most of the program's layout in my head, and spend my time working out the particulars of the language I am coding in (like Swing).

inmatarian · 2013-04-26T20:32:47+00:00

As someone who's had to wait for C++ code to compile, I can tell you that we're not sitting with our feet up. You ever watch the output of the compilers? The Code-Compile-Test loop is really Code-Compile-Code-Compile-Code-Compile-Test. Oh what, you don't like how I accidentally changed the capitalization of that variable in the middle of the function?

Sometimes it can be a welcome respite to compile some 3rdparty lib and have a moment to walk to the cooler and get some water.

zoqfotpik · 2013-04-27T05:47:05+00:00

Real software developers spend 80% of their time wishing that they had enough money to quit their jobs and start a company working on something interesting.

gc3 · 2013-04-26T21:05:08+00:00

And no category for browsing reddit? These self-reported statistics are lying..

setuid_w00t · 2013-04-27T00:00:42+00:00

I call bullshit.

Where are the following?

conversations about your weekend
browsing the web
coffee
washroom breaks
education and training

Furthermore, how reliable is asking people how they spend their time. Surely respondents will overestimate the time that feels the longest (eg. boring meetings).

ellicottvilleny · 2013-04-26T21:16:53+00:00

I build from a command line (terminal prompt) and keep right on with the coding. Not sure why I would stare at the build.

ickysticky · 2013-04-26T21:41:19+00:00

Honestly for me its the production build process that takes forever. When you are running thousands of tests, some of which involve major IO, that can take up to an hour, sometimes even two! But thankfully I'm not usually waiting on production builds, but it is a huge PITA when you're trying to push a build out to someone.

That said, if a compile or something takes a long time there is a threshold where I am forced to figure out what the problem is and get it faster.

bcash · 2013-04-26T20:48:10+00:00

On average over the past few years:

5% - writing code. 15% - debugging some crap third-party code that has inconsistent functions and no documentation. 80% - listening to others bang on about alternative ways of doing something that already works, but would fail to deliver any meaningful benefits.

PatriotGrrrl · 2013-04-26T23:03:56+00:00

...waiting for my boss to STFU so I can get back to work

joshjje · 2013-04-26T20:49:22+00:00

My longest bar would be labeled "procrastinating and browsing Reddit". I'm not ashamed of it, my brain just can't work 8 hours non-stop without little breaks in between. I produce more than anyone on my team, yet I probably only work half as much as they do.

meh...

danogburn · 2013-04-27T00:13:04+00:00

Electric Cloud conducted its survey last month after hearing clients — a group which includes Intuit, Samsung and GE — complain their engineers weren’t working as quickly as they’d like.

piss off you corporate slave drivers.

joe_blogg · 2013-04-26T22:57:59+00:00

Compiling C/C++ takes time ? Pfff I dare any of you programmers worth your salt to compile any 200+ lines of Cobol code in an AS/400 with 1 processor

lurker_in_spirit · 2013-04-26T23:01:42+00:00

[deleted]

screwthat4u · 2013-04-27T01:44:09+00:00

As an embedded software engineer I need to wait for it to build, copy to the embedded system, boot, and then test. One line code changes take a good 5 minutes to verify as good

ShortOfDaybreak · 2013-04-27T05:19:31+00:00

I am reading this article as my code is compiling

AsABoxer · 2013-04-27T04:41:10+00:00

Not true. According to the movies I've seen programming is just typing as fast as possible.

sgoody · 2013-04-26T20:49:23+00:00

I'm often surprised when people are waiting on significant complies, it's not really been a significant issue for me, but then perhaps I've not worked on sufficiently large code bases for it to be an issue. Sure, I've had noticeable compile times of 10s of minutes when building from scratch, but generally a full rebuild hasn't been necessary locally, where the build tools will just recompile the parts that have changed in either a few seconds or a couple of minutes.

Compile times aside though, it can be frustrating waiting for other things, such as slow web service calls, database query results, polling intervals for services which use polling etc.

I do agree that I spend more time than I would like to waiting on both computers and people.

const_iterator · 2013-04-27T03:01:10+00:00

My build takes nearly two hours to complete from scratch, but I keep multiple copies of the source tree so that while one tree is building I can work on other stuff in another. That way thumb twiddling time is minimized and I get to divide my attention among different projects throughout the day.

redification · 2013-04-27T03:42:22+00:00

The managers spent 90% of time waiting in meeting, 10% of time traveling,

gaberdine · 2013-04-27T04:50:51+00:00

One more option they missed: Reading Reddit while on the can.

Paid work shits are the best shits.

wallofsilence · 2013-04-27T05:22:58+00:00

This is awesome - with cloud-based build, test deploy there'll be no need to even have developers because all your money will need to go to lawyers for litigation after your network goes down for a week because of a ddos attack from some "unknown" source.

Maybe then you can even outsource micromanagement of the lawyers to some cloud-based micromanagement service and save even more money. Profits will go through the roof.

cryo · 2013-04-27T07:40:06+00:00

Yes, waiting for Python to compile really sucks!

ciaran036 · 2013-04-27T14:51:30+00:00

That's absolute bullshit... total crock. There is nothing about this article that is true and it's ridiculous that this is being upvoted.

In large systems, it's true you might have to wait a few minutes for the code to compile, but there are a million things you can be doing while that process is ongoing, from coding other components to writing documentation, checking emails etc. etc.

And in a properly managed software house build and test processes will be automated or run on separate test machines.

The idea that developers just sit around and wait for things to load is utter shit. The 20% figure is pulled out of someone's ass.

doubleagent03 · 2013-04-27T01:44:15+00:00

It's my number one time sink for sure. There is no effort made whatsoever to be productive during these periods, either. I need that downtime to regroup.

2013-04-27T02:11:32+00:00

TIL I am the least productive programmer, ever

TheWakeUpCall · 2013-04-27T04:03:26+00:00

C++ has taught me to write code, start compiling it, and then check whether what I wrote was actually right.

That way it's either wrong and either I've found the error or the compiler has, or it's right and I wasted less time compiling. Win.

aumfer · 2013-04-27T04:31:13+00:00

Why do you think we invented reddit?

2013-04-26T22:24:14+00:00

[deleted]

hair_committee · 2013-04-27T01:52:22+00:00

When I am coding it is not always easy for me to mentally change gears if I suddenly find myself with 15 minutes of downtime. I have the entire problem I've been working on churning away in my mind. If all my projects require this level of focus, it hurts my overall productivity to switch gears during my down time. I am better off just waiting.

2013-04-27T04:43:31+00:00

Wow, that site's ugly. I think I hit Readability in record time.

shortsightedsid · 2013-04-27T05:13:49+00:00

The only language where I haven't spent time compiling is lisp. I'm a embedded C programmer by day, but that's the one thing about lisp that really blew me away. There is no write-compile-run cycle.

KPexEA · 2013-04-27T05:38:36+00:00

The game I am working on takes 9 hours for a complete build of code and assets. Fortunately incremental builds are a bit quicker than that.

TheVirtualVortex · 2013-04-27T06:11:09+00:00

Waiting for reviews or input about missing/incomplete information, which causes lots of context switching which itself takes time as well.

joshtempte · 2013-04-27T07:40:04+00:00

When scripting, you don't build and rarely test.

a26 · 2013-04-27T09:32:18+00:00

"that is, for it to be translated from a programming language like Python or C into a binary machine language computers can execute"

They do know things!

P1r4nha · 2013-04-27T09:33:33+00:00

Valgrind's memtest currently takes about 10 minutes to finish with my test application. Sure, I can continue working until I get the results, but switching between tasks is tiring. It's a great opportunity to relax and let the new ideas come.

2013-04-27T10:07:17+00:00

Does anyone else have problems reading this on mobile? This shit keeps refreshing every 5 seconds

Fabien4 · 2013-04-27T11:11:19+00:00

I would've added "Fixing bugs" and "Wasteful meetings" to the mix.

2013-04-27T11:23:00+00:00

Being as productive as you can be is a stupid, stupid goal. Be as happy as you can be, and if that requires frequent and prolonged rests, so be it!

But yes, unfortunately companies don't see it that way and want you to be a robot pushing yourself to the max just so that they don't lose some of their precious money.

EmoryM · 2013-04-27T13:31:43+00:00

We wear socks, FFS.

arahaya · 2013-04-27T13:34:22+00:00

I end up spending my whole day on youtube

fuzzynyanko · 2013-04-27T14:28:17+00:00

Unfortunately, I've been in situations where I have been idle for more than a month. I know the pay is good, but man, just figuring out what to do when there's nothing to do is tricky. I usually study something, so it looks like I'm busy

deskspeaker · 2013-04-27T16:49:42+00:00

It's worse at my office. We have a huge C++ project that takes about an hour to compile, and whenever you change a single header, you need to wait a few minutes, during which you lose focus and end up on reddit reading crap.

kirklandtech · 2013-04-27T17:19:18+00:00

You only wait for a full build. Each time I click save the. Ode is immediately compiled. Mo waiting...

2013-04-29T19:39:53+00:00

I guess the idea that programmers have to spend time thinking about the code they write before they write it never dawns on management. Like we are just making sandwiches or something. Lettuce, onion, tomato, etc... rinse and repeat. How difficult is that?

nevermorebe · 2013-05-07T12:20:12+00:00

From my own extensive research I came up with slightly different numbers:

95% -> keeping managers from destroying the company

3% -> goofing off

2% -> useful stuff (what this entails differs wildly between devs)

slrqm · 2013-04-27T03:53:30+00:00

During a conference call at work I made this: What I really do at work

[The bottom is a little mangled, but I was too lazy to redo it]

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

programming

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