My view is that we work at nights / early morning because it's quiet. If I could manage to work in a quiet environment during the day, I would.
Why Programmers work at night (2011)
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Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#12This is SPAM! The original blog post, written by Swizec[0] can be read on his blog: http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/... Can mods please change this submission? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Swizec
Sure. Url changed from http://en.codeceo.com/why-programmers-work-at-night.html.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#13"I think it boils down to three things: the maker’s schedule, the sleepy brain and bright computer screens." I think a lot of it boils down to being expected to perform in really noisy not-conducive-to-thinking environments (yes, open-plan office, I'm talking about you) At least, that's been my experience over the last 30 years.
Parhaps offtopic, but f.lux ( https://justgetflux.com/ ) adjusts the screen brightness when it's getting night/late...
It's awesome for programmers :)
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#14This is SPAM! The original blog post, written by Swizec[0] can be read on his blog: http://swizec.com/blog/why-programmers-work-at-night/swizec/... Can mods please change this submission? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Swizec
Oops, sorry. It did confuse me why a good article was on an otherwise spammy site, but I didn't reach the obvious conclusion. Thanks for pointing it out, and to 'dang' for switching.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#15I disagree that /all/ programmers can be more productive at 2am rather than 10am.
Indeed, day-to-day Real Life[tm] stuff really does get in the way, and I myself have raged due to the frustration of having my concentration broken by e.g. my wife coming in asking some mundane question outwith the context of the problem I'm working on - it is literally a mental disaster when that happens.
I'm of the opinion that it's more likely that bugs are introduced in your code due to your cognitive functions being affected by sleep deprivation, which potentially offsets time gained via coding at night.
So whilst you /do/ have the time to build that model in your mind during the wee hours, I reckon it's more likely for there to be either en error in your mental model, or errors creep in during the translation from mind to machine.
I don't know what the answer is - choosing to be a coder makes for a very difficult situation, especially if you happen to be one of those coders who also have a wife - even more so if you've fork()ed a child process or two!
I've no doubt that there will be some quite exceptional humans out there who can manage to have a family life, work in a busy place with lots of interruptions, or can code till 4am and are /still/ able to work super-productively - but for the rest of us mere mortals, sleep deprivation == degraded cognitive function, and/or trying to code through normal hours == constant frustrating interruption.
Now, where's my coffee? ...
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#16"Because being tired makes us better coders." I've never noticed that being tired makes me code better. It might also depend on the kind of code you're writing: there could be a difference between how fatigue affects our ability to write straightforward code vs. algorithmically complex code. But I agree that programming late at night (or at least after everyone else in the office has gone home) makes me more producti…
This is anecdotal, unscientific and has no real basis to it what so ever, but I have one possible interpretation.
I'm overly critical of everything if write, be it code or prose.
I tend to overcomplicate things when I write. I think too far ahead and tend to get paralyzed of by the matrix of things I thing I need to consider. I think I need to understand the problem in its totality before I can write anything.
As I get tired, I get less critical, and possibly my short term memory gets worse. Suddenly I'm in a situation where instead of constantly being critical of my ideas, I have to keep of writing them down just to remember them and to fully formulate them. The part of my brain that tells me it's crap has fallen asleep. And the part that kept taps of EVERYTHING has shrunken down to only hold a few items or ideas at a time.
And suddenly the code is there. Done. I wrote it. Now let's write the next idea before I forget it. I'll go through it all later.
The effect is most obvious for me with prose. I used to get nothing done during the day. I just kept thinking all my writing is worthless. But then at aroun 1-3 AM, I would write a dozen pages. I would barely be awake, but my fingers would fly almost like on auto-pilot.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#17I am usually up by 4am in the summer and 5 or 6am in the winter. This is my favorite time to code. I used to be a night owl but have found I produce worse code when tired.
Interestingly weed seems to help me stay on track during the day.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#18As a part-time freelancer who also has a full-time job, I often don't have a choice but to code late at night or early morning.
I honestly hate working at night, simply because I often miss small things that cause silent bugs. On the other hand, coding at early morning (5-6 am, before my wife and kid are up) feels really great.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#19Because nobody's going to talk to you or you're not supposed to be somewhere else doing something else.
Re: Why Programmers work at night (2011)
#20This is entirely anecdotal. I'm very very skeptic that "the most productive time" is very late at night (or waking up at 4am).
Yes, there's some work done in the evenings (6pm-8pm) or at 6-8am, but that's more an indication of a noisy workplace or with multiple interruptions.
And getting into some sort of "pushing the limits to focus" sounds very daft. Specially if done often, the quality of the work will be very bad.
There are people that like to work by night, that's for sure. But I think that's the minority compared with the ones that like to work at reasonable hours (including the ones that start later than the standard 9-5)