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At what time of day do famous programmers work?

ivan.bessarabov.com

161–170 of 215 posts

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#161
post #96
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have emergency production rollback to the last working deploy. That's what you do when breaking changes are committed to master. Letting devs commit to master directly? Horrible idea.

That’s a great strategy that works in some scenarios. Preventing weekend breaks would depend on a daily deploy schedule? I do normally revert first and ask questions later when breaking changes appear, that’s similar to what you’re saying, I think... > Letting devs commit to master directly? Horrible idea. I’ve never been on a team that disallows commits to master. I can see the thinking, and maybe I should be doing…

> the places I’ve been are less formal than that and they might be concerned about slowing down turnaround times during the day

I'd be more concerned about code being committed to master without code review.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#162
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us do a “squash merge” (use git rebase to compress to meaningful points in a CR and again before merging to master or feature branches). This creates a clean history at the expense of not being able to stalk others work at high granularity or get as large a score on github’s tracker.

Git rebase interactive with fixup or squash will combine the commits into the first one. So the timestamp will still be somewhat reflective of when work is done (on average).

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if there is at least some biasing. E.g. first commits happening relatively soon after regularly scheduled scrum meetings. At least if they’re the type of developer who checkpoints after incremental changes.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#163
post #105

I'm a forgetful person, so I commit very often but with label "tmp", and later I squash them all into 1 proper commit before pushing. I'm sure I'm not alone, so commit time can't be used as barometer.

I would suggest making use of 'git commit --fixup' or 'git commit --squash' which creates a commit that is specially-named such that you can later squash everything together with `git rebase --autosquash'. It's really transformed how I work on large patchsets.

Great tip, thanks.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#165
How does got get "local" time zone. I sometimes commit on systems set to utc. And I'm unsure how many people accurately set time zone in online tools like github. And many devs esp famous ones travel a lot. Not to mention moving.

All this to say, there's too many unknowns for me to trust this "study"

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#166
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting; I don’t consider what I said extreme or radical at all. I’ll rephrase it into a question: what do you claim that commit time demonstrates, considering that commit times can and do in practice very often change immediately prior to push?

How can a commit time change?

It's a different commit. I was talking about introducing and then pushing new commits with different timestamps than the original, not somehow modifying timestamps on a specific commit. The commit that gets pushed can, and often does, have a different timestamp than the timestamp on the commit when the code was written.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#167
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, yes I’m well aware that Linus wrote git. I’m not sure what made you so angry, but I’m up for continuing this discussion if you’re really open to discussion, as opposed to proving me wrong no matter what. It currently feels like the latter, but I think you’re not listening or understanding what I’ve said. It seems like you’re making assumptions. Maybe you missed that I pointed out above that Linus makes a l…

For what is worth kragan is entirely right here.

As strawman arguments often are within their own context. That doesn't mean I'm wrong. My point that merge commits were included in the OP's article and data went unanswered by @kragen, and it's directly relevant to what I said at the top; merge commits don't represent work time, but they're being counted here. Code commits also don't necessarily represent work time either, due to squashing, stashing, and general dev practice, so I haven't heard any evidence that convinces me otherwise. Do you have any to add?

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#168

As someone who generally works a 9-5 job at a company where most people are expected to work 9-5, can anyone explain if there are any norms or rules that enable someone to work such abnormal hours at their companies? Do companies like Google not care as much about work hours? I can't imagine anyone showing up at 2pm at any of the places I've worked, regardless of how productive they were.

Tldr; Small companies. And "earning" it.

After 6-12mo getting shit done, probably including a 12-20 hour working until "oh shit loading money" issue. And discussion with my boss. I have freedom to time shift my work. I'm consistently present for meetings. But if I'm blocked by external factors ill take Monday off so I can work on Sat (unblocked on weds) to meet following Monday deadline. Often work late at night where I can get solid block of 3-4 hour uninterupterd. I mostly work 10 to 7 to avoid traffic. I vaguely track hours and I average 36-40 or less. But they are so much more productive. Many people spend 8+ hours at work but get little done. My 6 hours are solid work. It also helps me manage burn out.

Im slightly manic depressive and partner/childless. Works great for me. YMMV.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#169
post #105

I'm a forgetful person, so I commit very often but with label "tmp", and later I squash them all into 1 proper commit before pushing. I'm sure I'm not alone, so commit time can't be used as barometer.

I would suggest making use of 'git commit --fixup' or 'git commit --squash' which creates a commit that is specially-named such that you can later squash everything together with `git rebase --autosquash'. It's really transformed how I work on large patchsets.

You da real mvp.

It is ridiculous how many nice features git has accumulated through the years, but their discoverability is... not excellent -- partially because of how many options we now have. It's a vicious circle.

Re: At what time of day do famous programmers work?

#170
post #131
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically the author thought of “epic programmers” and only came up with white males. Women and PoC have given great contributions in our industry and are underrepresented. This could have been an opportunity for the author to learn about some and give them a bit of credit.

Can you give us some examples of programmers of "epic" repute that are women or people of color? (Or both?) I'd like to be able to bring them up when I find myself reading something that doesn't include them.

Margaret Hamilton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_en...
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