What is a programmer’s life like?
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How is their personal life, family life, friends, work environment and everything that you can think that a programmer does throughout the day?
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Fun
All of the above doesn’t leave much time for fun. To keep my sanity, I squeeze every bit of free time out of life to ensure that I’m not missing out on opportunities. Of course spending time with my family is fun, but for the sake of separation I’ll be excluding that time from this section (I feel I did the Family section justice). As part of my free time at home I enjoy building side projects. I love creating beautiful web applications that could benefit the lives of others. My passion is creating things for others through programming. I love the feeling I get when someone enjoys something I’ve made. I can’t get enough of it. I’ve started hundreds of side projects, “finished” a few (is a project ever really finished?) and am working on a promising one right now. I love it and can’t get enough, but I pace myself so that I don’t squander precious time with my family.
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Friends
Thanks to the reality of what I’ve stated above, time with my friends has come to a halt as of late. I don’t boil this down to being a programmer, though. It’s much more aligned with a change in priorities. In the past year I’ve graduated from college, gotten married, and brought our first-born into the world. Combine those three with getting plunged into the working world and it’s a lot at once. I might be an edge case, and I hope to change it someday, but as of right now that’s life.
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Family
For programmers whose work isn’t the most important area of their life, the family is. In my case, everything I do is motivated by my family. I don’t currently get to spend as much time with my wife and son as I’d like, but I hope to be in a position that allows me to spend more time them relatively soon. I’m lucky in that I work about 45 hours a week right now (some developers work much, much more) which gives me around 123 hours to spend elsewhere. Not bad relative to some programmers.
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Work
Work for a programmer is their bread and butter. It’s usually where we get to program the most. In my case, I program, review/monitor analytics, look for new areas to collect data on, and implement all of the above each day. I also take breaks to keep my sanity and drink copious amounts of coffee (a lot of decaf, though, I like the taste). I tried to write a chronological hour-by-hour timeline, but failed since my days can vary wildly.
The work environment for a developer can vary from terrible to downright entertaining. Most companies know that a happy, comfortable programmer is an efficient one. The ones that don’t know this typically can’t keep programmers on board for very long.
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Wake up around 9… Shit, I overslept again… Have coffee, drive to work… People joke I’m late again, but nobody is really surprised… Have coffee, check mail… There’s a bug to fix, ask them to send me the log files, check Quora and Facebook in the meantime… Spend the first half of the day fixing the bug, go have lunch… Get some great idea, ask to leave work so I can go prototype it from home, where it’s easier to concentrate…. Finish work around who-knows-when, switch computer and start working on my personal project… “Aren’t you tired?” No, this is a physics engine, the other was business software… Have dinner while watching something about coding… Work another 8 hours, go to bed in 2-3 in the morning when I just can’t take it anymore… Think about code while falling asleep… Wake up around 9…. Shit, I overslept again…