Jul 19, 2019 19:00:00

How do top-notch programmers work?

By

Jefferson Santos

Many working people work according to fixed working hours, but freelance programmers are prejudiced that they are working flexibly regardless of time, let alone. If you are a top-notch programmer, you may be treated as an imaginary creature, 'Isn't it always working when you're awake?' Meanwhile, blogger Ivan Bessarabov reveals 'working hours of top-notch programmers.'

At what time of day does famous programmers work?
https://ivan.bessarabov.com/blog/famous-programmers-work-time

At what time of day does famous programmers work? Part 2. Workweek vs Weekend.
https://ivan.bessarabov.com/blog/famous-programmers-work-time-part-2-workweek-vs-weekend

The job of a programmer is to write 'source code ', which is a blueprint for software and applications, on his own. The written source code is backed up and shared with others by utilizing a version control system (VCS). One of the most famous VCSs, 'Git', has a specification that 'generates a time stamp' when saving the source code. Bessarabov took notice of the specification and investigated 'time zones when famous programmers work'.

Below is a signature called commit that is generated when you save the source code in Git. The author of the source code, the e-mail address of the author, the save time, etc. are written in the commit, making it easy to understand at a glance 'who wrote the source code when'. The part surrounded by the red frame below represents the 'save time'. The save time of this example is '1563188141', which is unclear at first glance, but it shows the number of seconds from 0:00:00 on January 1, 1970, and when translated into human language, it is '2019 07. It will be 10:55:41 on the 15th of the month. This study is an analysis of the commit save times of top-notch programmers.

Below is a summary of Linux-related work hours for operating system Linux and Git creator

Linus Torvalds, who was also used in this survey. The leftmost 'hour' indicates the time, and the horizontal bar graph in the center indicates the 'amount worked at that time'. There are two types of horizontal bar graphs, 'Monday to Friday' and 'Saturday and Sunday', which show the amount of work done on weekdays and the amount of work done on holidays by famous programmers.

Looking at Mr. Torvalds' work on weekdays, it seems that the work started around 7 o'clock, the efficiency peaked around 10 o'clock, and the work was almost finished around 8 o'clock. It seems that he may work overtime, but he seems to hardly work after 22:00. If work is done on weekdays and holidays in the same way, the amount of work on weekdays should be five-sevenths (71.4%) and the amount of work on holidays should be two-sevenths (28.6%). Weekday work is 80.7% of the total, and holiday work is 19.3%. Torvalds seems to write Linux source code on holidays, but he doesn't seem to work at the same level as on weekdays.

Mr. Torvalds' Git-related work hours are as follows. Similar to Linux-related work, the main work is from 9:00 to 20:00, but it seems that the amount of work on weekdays is 73.7% and that on holidays is 26.3%. However, the amount of work related to Git is much smaller than that of Linux, so it may be within the margin of error.

The working hours of Sebastian Riedel , the creator of the well-known web application frameworks Catalyst and Mojolicious, are as follows, and you can see that they work evenly throughout the day. You can expect that you're probably sleeping around 4 to 13 o'clock, but it seems that you may be working. In addition, Riedel works as well on holidays as on weekdays. 'His work schedule is out of order, but his productivity is enviable,' Bessarabov wrote.

Chris Lattner is a super-famous programmer who has created the compiler board LLVM and the programming language Swift, and has been sought after by super-famous companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Google. He seems to be a night-time person who starts work at 16:00, takes a two-hour break from 2:00 to 3:00, finishes work at 6:00 with a spurt from 4:00, and rests from 7:00 to 15:00. .. Mr. Ratner also works on holidays as much as on weekdays.

The working hours of

Go language developer Rob Pike are as follows. Maybe I'm sleeping from midnight to 6 o'clock, I'm hardly working. From 9:00 to 17:00, I work hard and sometimes work overtime, but the working hours are very common. In addition, the amount of work on holidays is less than 10%, and it seems that they work according to general working hours.

Brad Fitzpatrick, who created the SNS-like blog service LiveJournal at the age of 19, lived a life of sleeping around 8 am while creating the open source memory cache system Memcached, and was absent on holidays. ..

In recent years, Mr. Fitzpatrick has started working as a member of Google's Go language development team, resting from 23:00 to 7:00, and seems to have returned to the general life of working from 9:00 to 19:00. There is no change in the point of resting well on holidays.

Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the programming language PHP , seems to work all day long, but his peak work seems to be from 16:00 to 23:00.

Guido van Rossum , the inventor of the general-purpose programming language Python and a benevolent dictator for his leadership, works from 13:00 to 23:00 on weekdays and seems to take a rest on holidays.

Mr. Fabrice Verard, who created the free source movie / audio playback software FFmpeg and the virtual machine emulator QEMU , is a person who sleeps from 1:00 to 8:00 or hardly works. He seemed to work on holidays as much as on weekdays. It's easy to see that the working hours of top-notch programmers vary from person to person.