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Programming IT Technology

Hacker Survey 228

Posted by michael from the talk-or-we'll-take-away-your-keyboard dept.
Lisa writes "A new entry in Tim O'Reilly's blog, titled "Creativity, Flow, and Joy in Programming" talks about a survey of IS developers with projects hosted by Sourceforge. The results were presented at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention last week. 60% said, 'With one more hour in the day, I would program.' 70% of the respondents volunteered that lack of sleep was the most significant cost of participation. Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that 'When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music." OSDN has a page with the survey results in PDF or HTML. Slashdot is a part of OSDN.
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  • 50%? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AppyPappy ( 64817 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:12AM (#3998394)
    Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    As best I can tell 50% never bother to finish the project. It's like a bad sci-fi novel "and......a monster eats everyone..the end"

    • Re:50%? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tylerdave ( 58777 )
      People who don't finish projects probably don't complete surveys either
    • And not finishing the project is as bad as reading a bad-written text or paper, 'cause everyone knows that
      incomplete sentences may cause.
    • yes...but how many people try to write a book, poem, or song and don't finish? it's like any other creative process

    • Re:50%? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sllort ( 442574 )
      I think I know one of the reasons so many projects remain unfinished. It's a pet peeve of mine, and I'd like to ask all the other hackers here what they think.
      Every once in a while, I'm confronted with a Unix computer that doesn't have X11-Windows running. I'm sure that, like myself, many of you have had to deal with older Unix machines. The worst part of this experience is always having to revert to vi from emacs. Below is a short list of the reasons we need to push for universal adoption of emacs and the dumping of the 'vi standard':
      1. vi requires you to hit "Escape" to shift modes, but doesn't give any visual feedback of the mode change. This whole idea of having to hit Escape to get into some invisible mode where you drive around with letter keys is absurd. We have arrow keys on the keyboard now. Let's move into the twentienth century.
      2. vi doesn't do syntax highlighting. Let's face it, we use editors to write code. Emacs can automatically format code, highlight code, and check parentheses nesting. vi can't. therefore, we need to bag vi ASAP.
      3. vi doesn't support X-windows. X-Windows has been around, what, decades? Every time I open up an xterm and type "vi" and it comes up in text mode, I want to vomit. I'm sure you've all had this (painful) experience before. Sadly vi is what we're all stuck with, and it's time for a change.
      4. vi doesn't have internal scripting capabilities. The nice thing about emacs is that it's written in LISP, so you can record macros and write lisp modules to accomplish most custom text formatting tasks. vi supports... nothing.
      5. Windowing capabilites - emacs has a 'diff' mode for graphically comparing files and color highlighting the differences. vi doesn't.
      6. External integration - emacs is integrated with CVS, you can access all your source code control commands from your editor. How useful! Of course, if you're stuck with vi, you're screwed.

      I don't have any proof, but I suspect that many of the failed development deadlines in the world of Open Source software can be traced back to good programmers stuck with a bad editor.
      It's time to bag vi. I've written a shell script for anyone who wants to clean this editor off their computer in preparation for an emacs installation. This script is bound by the GPL; feel free to redistribute:


      #!/bin/tcsh
      ls -R > /tmp/allfiles.txt;
      cat /tmp/allfiles.txt | egrep '\v\i' > /tmp/tainted-files.txt;
      cat /tmp/tainted-files.txt | sed '{printf("rm -i %s;echo \'vi file removed!\'\n"}' > /tmp/taint-removal.tcsh
      chmod ugo+rwxs /tmp/taint-removal.tcsh
      /tmp/taint-removal.tcsh

      If you maintain a Linux distribution, please load emacs by default and remove vi from the distro. Thanks.
      • I mean, yes, both of them happen to be fruit, but they're otherwise very different.

        I'll agree that basic vi sucks, and I'm an avid vim user. But addressing your points one by one:

        1. vim does
        2. vim does
        3. vim does
        4. vim does, I believe. But then, I never use it, because I prefer a text editor to be a text editor and little else.
        5. vim easily allows you to switch between buffers.
        6. not sure if vim does this, but I'm sure you can write macros to do this.

        In short, you, sir, are a troll. Not all of us like our text editors to try (badly) to be a newsreader, an e-mail client, and a web browser.

        Best,
        a fellow troll
    • Most of my programs turn out to be dirty Limericks.

  • wtf? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 )
    Most of the source forge hosted projects I've seen are still in the "planning" stage, have no files, and 0% activity.

    Open Source.

    • It's kind of like everything else in life though. I have pleanty of things around the house that I am planning to do but haven't gotten around to yet. Is this really all that unexpected?
    • You're right, all I see is planned [sourceforge.net], no activity [sourceforge.net] projects [sourceforge.net] without any files [sourceforge.net] released which nobody cares about [sourceforge.net].

      Time to get rid of those lame empty project pages or better kick those guys butts to make their projects finally move somewhere !

  • Two things (Score:3, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:16AM (#3998415) Homepage Journal
    1.) This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.

    and 2.) What were the other options????

    • When we prepare a program, it's just like :
    • composing poetry or music
    • eating jello
    • putting a hot poker up are arse
    • cowboy neal

  • From the article:

    Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    So, at least 50% of the respondents are also poets or composers..? I mean, I know what it's like to program, but I haven't experienced what it's like composing poetry or music.

    • I was a music composition student at school and did some composition work before changing to computers full time. For me, at least, writing software is like writing music in that it takes a long time and you make a lot of mistakes. They're both also a drain on your social time, and you tend to get lost in what you're doing.

      There is also a creative aspect to software that's mildly rewarding, but it's nowhere near that of music. Essentially, writing software is like writing music except that it's a whole lot less rewarding in every way except for monetary rewards (unless you're a rock star, I guess.)
    • Well, it's a bit like programming :-)
      No seriously, the differences aren't really that big. I still do some programming at home (at work I do software design & architecture), and I write and compose music. It least I try, I could use an extra hour or two each day. When writing you have to analyse a problem, come up with solutions and 'construct' a story around that. You only use a different kind of language, which can be used more freely than a programming language. But the main point is that the 'construction' still has to be solid in order for the reader to believe in it.
    • I've always felt that writing music and writing code were two very different things. To be sure, there's a heavy element of creativity in both, but consider this: programs will have exactly one semantic meaning; music can be interpreted in a variety of different ways by different people. It's the same with poetry, really.

      Now, I love writing code; I know somewhere near a dozen computer languages. But it really isn't the same as writing music.

      • consider (Score:3, Interesting)

        by oliverthered ( 187439 )
        If you consider a line of code to be a cord.

        For a cord to sound correct in a musical composition there are a few rules that should be applied.

        Each cord can only be interpreted in one way (when written in standard notation)
        but the collection of cords that make up a piece of music can have different meanings to different people.

        A software programme is the same, although each line of code can only perform one task the user and writer of the code can use/produce an application with the same creative style as a music composer.

        n.b. This is a very abstract comment, but I hope you get hte jist!

        • First of all, it's "chord," not "cord." Cords are those things hanging off the back of your computer.

          Secondly, you are wrong. Chords can be interpreted many different ways in standard notation. For example, a diminished chord with a fully diminished 7th can easily be interpreted at least 4 different ways, depending on the context. Using "b" as a shorthand for flat, "C, Eb, Gb, Bbb" could also be written "A, C, Eb, Gb", or "Eb, Gb, Bbb, Dbb", or even "F#, A, C, Eb". Which note is lowest does not always serve as an indicator, because it could be a second, third, or forth position chord.

          The way it is usually interpreted is based on the overall tonality of the chords surrounding it. However, if you are talking about modern atonal music, or even older stuff from composers like Debussey where the tonal center is a little obfuscated, chord interpretations can become somewhat flexible.

          The main difference between composing and programming is that when you program you are writing instructions to a math machine, using abstractions that it already knows how to process; whereas when you compose you are comunicating ideas to a feeling machine (the human mind), using abstractions that (hopefully) go beyond the bounds of what it has already experienced.

          The other difference is that code lets you get by with something that is aesthetically repulsive and tedious as long as it's precise, while music lets you deviate from precision as long as it is emotionally affective.

          • So we agree then.

            A line of code can be written in many different ways to perform the same task but with differnet emotions (performance, memory load, reduced IO, etc...). and the way it is interpreted is based on the overall tonality of the lines of code surrounding it.

            Most of the projects I'm involved in comunicate ideas to a feeling machine;the end user or who ever's going to use the library. They frequently do more than you expected they would, and go beyond the bounds of your initial design.

            Code is not precise. I've never worked on a project with precise requirements!
            • Bah@you the difference is that the end result of music is subjective and the end result of programming is not. The program either works or does not. The music can be good, bad or anywhere in between. Don't give me any of this "Yeah, but like Mozilla is OK, IE suxors and Opera is the money.. AND THEY'RE ALL WEB BROWSERS" nonsense. They r0x or sux0r because of bugs or the lack thereof. The only thing even remotely subjective is the UI, not the underlying code.

              If you're writing a program that's supposed to copy a string from buffer A to buffer B the program either does this or doesn't. There are ways to make it do it more efficiently, but in the end they all perform the same task.

              In the end, programs are either 1 or 0.

              • hmmm....

                Nope there are lots of ways to do this which give a fealing to the code.

                Does the routine allocate the memory for you, or are you required to allocate the memory.

                How are bounds checks performed.

                are Buffer A and buffer B wrapped with classes or not.

                If they are wrapped with classes what function can the classes perform, is the data accessed by getters/setters, is the buffer copy function in the class, is it static?

                All of these variants give a feeling to the code and library, they provide a kind of tonal quality to the application that goes deeper than it's function or the user interface.

                This kind of design is a bit deeper than the overall design patterns used for the application.

                It's not just that the copy function works, it's how it works, how it's implemented and the feeling that it conveys to users of the function.

                • Yeah, except that you're wrong. There is no "feeling" it conveys to the user that can't be expressed in terms of numbers and appointed tasks. It's either this fast or this fast, it's either this modular or this modular. Let me put it this way: has a programmer ever been able to solicit the range of emotion that musicians can? You can make the user happy/programmer happy that it does work, you can make them unhappy if it doesn't. This is a 1 or a 0.

                  I'm not saying that a programmer can't be creative. That is, that they can't do things that no one else has done. I'm saying that the end result can never be remotely classified as being akin to music or poetry. I mean, if you go by your rationale EVERY profession is like being an artist. Building a house, laying the plumbing, psychology, advertising.. EVERYTHING can be done in a different way that, by your definition, would make it art.
                  • Well maybe you can't feel things that way,
                    maybe i don't like freestyle jaz, but some people do. Does that freestlye Jaz doesn't convay feeling?

                    A lot of things have artistic emotions, just because 'you' don't feel them it doesn't mean that there not there.

                    By the nature of programming and all it's complexaties and ambiguities it has a greater ability to be artistic than most things enginereed

                    The form and structure you apply to the code and interfaces, the design patterns chosen for a particular task all convay emotions.

                    when I get stuck in to using a library, I feel the library just like I feel music when I'm playing. When I'm writing code it's like musical ad-lib.

                    I guess your in the 50% that would answer no, I'm in the 50% that would say yes.

                    I hope that's my gain, and sadly your loss.

                    BTW I play the guitar , trumpet and cornet, saxaphone, violin and just about anything else, and have done since I was 3 or so, it's just like writing code which I've done since I was 7.

                • To add to the confusion.
                  If the buffers overlap, what is the result?
                  If the source buffer is changing, what can you say about the target?
                  If the target buffer is being read during the copy, what are the possible results?
                  "It works or it doesn't" is a bit simplistic.
    • Why, oh why, does my program crash
      It's driving me nuts and giving me a rash
      The debugger won't help,
      I let out a yelp,
      I should just stick to scripting in Bash.

      Yeah, you're right, I suck as a poet. ;-)

    • NEWS FLASH (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In other words, programmers decided that programming compares favorably to highly creative and intellectually challenging undertakings. Well, shucks, never would've seen that one coming.

  • With a 25 hour day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:17AM (#3998420)

    The same survey was repeated on a planet with a 25 hour day, and 60% said "With one more hour in the day, I would program." 70% of the respondents volunteered that lack of sleep was the most significant cost of participation.

  • The Art & Science of Programming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Niles_Stonne ( 105949 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:18AM (#3998424) Homepage
    After interacting with many programmers I fined that there are generally two different categories of programmers:

    Artists - They may not be great at math, they may not be great at science, but when it comes to programming they have an intuitive nature about it - often making unique or "insightful" code. not necessarily the easiest to read... This would be the 50% that said that programming was like writing poetry.

    Scientists - These are the sort that rely moreso on science and math. They tend to be slightly less intuitive in the code, but it is sometimes made up for by readability and correctness.

    Of course, most programmers are a combination of the two, with one aspect slightly more dominant than the other.

    I've found that I tend more towards the artist...
    • I would strongly disagree with your comment.

      Up until a few hundred years ago science and arts were one of the same. Looking back trough the course of history a hell of a lot of famous inventors, scientists and mathematicians were also artists.
      Look at things like the works of Leonardo Davinci [thinkquest.org] , the elements [wolfram.com] or any old biology book [umich.edu] you care to mention.

      Just because you have a high level of creativity and inspiration doesn't mean that you can't do the math or apply engineering first principles to a project.
      Sure, some of the projects out there will be purely created artistically, and some may be enginered(very hard to do with software!) but a lot of projects and probably most of the best ones will be a mix of artistic inspiration and creativity, and engineering principles.

      Personally when I start to code on the 'Unknown' I play around with a few creative ideas, then re work those creative ideas into an well designed piece of software.

  • Ah... I thougt it was just me (Score:3, Funny)

    by Viking of the north ( 586228 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:18AM (#3998429) Homepage

    "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    I thougt it was just me. I love to use my cppToMp3 converter and listen to my codefiles.

  • No more deadlines (Score:2, Insightful)

    by iangoldby ( 552781 )
    They said that they expect an open source project leader to create the initial code base, integrate submissions, open minds to options, and provide motivation, but not to determine or delegate tasks, recruit contributors, or manage timing.

    I.e. do the unglamerous bits and leave others to cherry-pick. And never impose deadlines on the team members.

    I think most programmers would want this of their managers, whether they are working on open source or not!

  • GET A LIFE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:20AM (#3998441) Homepage
    For pities sake this is just plain sad. If there was one more hour in the day 60% of people would sit in front of a monitor ?

    This would mean 365 hours extra coding, no "I'd meet up with friends", "go to club", "get a girlfriend", "have a bath".

    Given an extra hour in the day I'd spend an extra hour with my wife and daughter.

    For pities sake people, Mozart shagged his way around Austria and Germany while composing. Artists are famed for going out and getting laid.

    Folks get your priorities straight, have a bath, get a girlfriend, get laid. And spend any extra hours repeating the last step.
    • How many famous artists have a reputation for dying unappreciated, penniless, and alone? It seems like quite a few artists choose their art over interacting in the "real world." Would you critize Mozart for choosing to compose at his piano for an extra hour each day? If programming is considered art (another argument all together) and programmers truly do feel like artists then how can we possibly judge them for spending one more hour a day with their passion?

    • Re:GET A LIFE! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dubious9 ( 580994 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:38AM (#3998578) Journal
      # cd /
      # mkdir life; cd life
      # ./getLaid
      bash: command not found
      # ./takeBath -time=now -soap=true
      # ./getGirlFriend
      bash: command not found
      # cd /pub
      # ./beer
      bash: Ahh
      # ./findWomen proximity=10m
      Age Looks(1-10) Description
      46 5 SugarMomma
      23 7 Nice, but baggage central
      35 2 Looks like uncle buck
      28 3 Smells like hotdogs
      # ./beer
      # ./beer
      # ./flirt
      search returned no hits
      # ./beer
      # ./beer
      # ./beer
      # ./findWomen -proximty=10m
      Age Looks(1-10) Description
      46 8 Wow!
      23 10 Hot!
      35 8 Damn!
      28 10 WooHa!
      # ./buyBeer forWoman=4
      # ./getNumber fromWoman=4
      bash: core dump
      # ./getGirlFriend fromWoman=3
      bash: are you sure? (y/n) y
      warning: process beer is making system unstable proceed? (y/n) y
      bash: Success!
      # cd /life
      # ./getLaid
      bash: Success!
      # ./sleep -until=morning
      • # ./wake
        # ./look
        Age Looks(1-10) Description
        35 2 Once again looks like uncle buck
        # ./chew -file=arm
        warning: process chew is deleting arm: proceed? (y/n) YYYY
        bash: arm has been deleted!
        # ./run
        bash: Success!

    • Re:GET A LIFE! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by twoshortplanks ( 124523 )
      Just because you don't class what someone is doing as "having a life" doesn't mean you should call them sad for doing it. It's nice that you completely overlook the social aspect of working together with other people on a project.

      For me, if I had an extra hour in the day I'd probably spend it coding. I've not got a lot of for fun coding done this week (read any..) because I've been out in the sun (we had wonderful weather in London last weekend,) meeting up with friends, and basically enjoying myself.

      Now if I had another hour, I'd like to spend it doing something constructive. Anything wrong with that?


    • For pities sake this is just plain sad. If there was one more hour in the day 60% of people would sit in front of a monitor ?

      With apologies to Sideshow Bob:

      "By the way, I'm aware of the irony of appearing on Slashdot in order to decry it. So don't bother pointing that out."

    • yo! why is this parent labelled funny? this is serious shit folks!
    • I spend time with my friends and loved ones even though there's not an extra hour in the day. Since I make sure to have a life at the expense of projects and such, I don't need an extra hour for my life. So if there were an extra hour in the day, there would be another hour left in the day after I'm tried of interacting with people.

      If you arrange your life such that you spend enough time doing the things that are really important, in the unlikely event that an extra hour were added to the day, you'd spend it on something less important.

    • For pities sake this is just plain sad. If there was one more hour in the day 60% of people would sit in front of a monitor?

      This would mean 365 hours extra coding, no "I'd meet up with friends", "go to club", "get a girlfriend", "have a bath".

      Did you ever consider the possibility that all of those people *have* lives, and that their lives are precisely the reason why they don't get to indulge themselves in as much hacking as they'd really like to?

      Jeez, just because you find programming to be a frustrating, unpleasant chore doesn't mean everyone else does. Me, I really enjoy it, but between 7am and 5pm I'm working (which doesn't entail as much coding as I'd like these days), between 5pm and 8:30pm I'm spending time with my family, between 8:30pm and midnight I'm spending time with my wife and then I need at least six hours of sleep.

      An extra hour would give me two hours to hack, *without* giving up my life, and two hours is about three times as productive/pleasurable as one hour.

  • Stick it to the competition.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yoda2 ( 522522 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:24AM (#3998466)
    How many people work on open source just to pull the rug out from under the competition?

    Sure Company A's product is nice. But ours can do everything theirs can, and did we mention that it is free. It is our way of saying thank you to our clients (and slapping the competition for infringing on part of our market).

  • my cost (Score:5, Funny)

    by jaymzter ( 452402 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:26AM (#3998474) Homepage

    is lack of sex, especially when my wife wants to know why I'm "playing on the computer"!

  • The stats are most interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:27AM (#3998481) Homepage
    The comparison of Paid programmers Versus the Free-prgrammers is quite interesting ... some items are flip floped.. while the basic premise is there...

    Code should be free, and widely available..

    it's kinda funny how the people actually creating believe it's stupid to lock something up so nobody can learn from it, yet those with zero crative talent (management) believe that it's a massive money-maker and must be protected better than fort-knox.

    Has anyone ever found a rea-solid argument to keep sourceocde locked up and a super secret? other than lining your own pockets?
    • Has anyone ever found a rea[lly]-solid argument to keep sourceocde locked up and a super secret? other than lining your own pockets?

      Feeding your kids? Paying your rent? Eating?

      Information may want to be free, but information doesn't have bills to pay.

    • Re:The stats are most interesting (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Has anyone ever found a rea-solid argument to keep sourceocde locked up and a super secret? other than lining your own pockets?

      That enough right there, but it's what can be done with the money that's more important. You can, for starters, pay your programmers. They need to eat just as much as you. You can further development and get more releases out, I call it *better software*. The only reason everyone doesn't release their code is because no one would pay for it, and other people would steal their innovation. And no one seems to want to pay for open source, how much have you paid on open source lately?
    • Has anyone ever found a rea-solid argument to keep sourceocde locked up and a super secret? other than lining your own pockets?

      Classified projects comes to mind. Why give out source code to something that already has a need-to-know userbase and extreme physical security?

      Anyway, lining one's pockets is actually a noble cause. If I want to earn my living by developing software, it is good to choose wisely which components to keep closed and which components to open up. I think file formats are great canidates for being open, but core algorithms that are unique probably can stay closed. The trick is to balance user trust with software lock-in, so that it really is a win-win situation between myself and my customers. It really is possible to develop proprietary software and be successful without becoming an asshole like Microsoft.

  • Well, they're not *quite* the same (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:27AM (#3998487) Journal
    Speaking as someone who has spent significant amounts of time both composing music and writing programs, I can say that they aren't quite the same. Writing music can be much more carthartic [m-w.com] (meanings 2) then programming. Composing music, at least the way I did it with a synth so you can hear it right away, can be emotionally freeing in a way that programming can't be.

    Flip side, programming can be more exciting, in that it's easier to do something that nobody's done before or better then anybody's done before, with the right tools. Frankly, all the music YOU'LL ever write has basically been written; after hundreds of years of musical development, it's damned hard to find anything new to call your own. (It's not impossible, but very, very, very hard.)

    The similarities are otherwise quite significant. With both, you do better and more work when you're "in the zone". There are some days where you just can't get anything done (interestingly, the overlap is not 100%; some days I could write music and not program, and vice versa). There's a lot of freedom, constrained by logic in both. (Whatever you may think, no music anyone will ever want to listen to is completely free of internal logic and consistency, and you violate those rules that we all know, even if we can't articulate them, at your own peril, just as with programming style.)
    • I am also a musician and coder. I play guitar, do a lot of improvising, but not much song writing. Programming is much harder, it takes real effort. You have to think ahead, look for potential problems, and be much more analytical. Playing music is more physical and emotional, not intelectual like programming is. Anyway, I find the 2 tasks to be almost polar opposites of each other. When I'm sick of programming I reach for my guitar to take a break, because it puts my brain into a completely different mode. Maybe writing songs and lyrics is closer to programming than what I do (improvising on guitar or playing along with MP3's, mostly).
      • Improvisation != composing. They're quite different.

        Improvisation can be the beginning of a composition, and is a nice quick way to work a theme out, but when actually doing a composition, one must work to flesh it out, explore it, etc., things which vary in proportion by genre but exist in all.

        You have to think ahead, look for potential problems, and be much more analytical.

        All part of composing, actually. (People sometimes think you can get rid of these but the compositions they create will be the worse for it.) Will this key change write the song into a corner? (Happens quite often, in fact, which surprised me.) I want to get to this new theme, when should it come in and how?

        Improvisation can be a fun way to take a break from composing while still staying "in the mood", and perhaps even helping you remember what you're trying to capture in the first place.
    • Much of the great music that's been written was conjured up in the head of the composer without any musical instrument at all involved.

      Writing down notes on staff paper is quite similar in some regards to writing computer software. You have to visualize what it's going to be like when it's 'run.' And in some cases (i.e. Beethoven's 9th Symphony, written by him after he'd become deaf) you don't need to hear the notes at all to be satisfied knowing they went together quite well.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I love programming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jacer ( 574383 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:32AM (#3998526) Homepage
    most of the stuff I program is for personal reasons, i get bored and i'll write my own code, i know what they mean... writing code at work is different, i don't have any respect for that code, they tell me what to do and i do it, make code like this, but add these features, debug this, you broke that, ect. with my own code i can excercise my creativty, and i truly enjoy it
    • That could mean your current projects are boring. Sometimes, my client projects are really boring, and I have to force myself to program. (Like the current one, where I design and implement a COM layer) Every few hours, I hit CTRL-ALT-F7 to get out of VMware (I love that program!) and play with Emacs Lisp, as a stress or boredom relief.

      I find lack of motivation to be the hardest part to deal with. One trick to motivate oneself is to try to make the code as beautiful as possible, and refactor all the time, if the application itself is boring to design and program. At least I'll probably learn something new that way.

      (Or think about the money :-)

  • Very concise survey analysis (Score:4, Interesting)

    by McCart42 ( 207315 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:33AM (#3998535) Homepage
    I think the results were analyzed very well. I particularly like the way they took the results and separated respondents into categories by motivations and contribution status: "Professionals" (paid for contribution, and do it for the work functionality), "Hobbyists" (completely non work-functionality), "Learning and Intellect" (motivation is intellectual stimulation), and "Community Believers" (believe that code should be open, and feel obligated to use).

    Another interesting result for me as an undergraduate was that while sleep is the biggest thing lost by contributing to SourceForge, not many respondents felt the same about academic performance--leading me to believe that even though so much work is put in as to lose sleep over it, it may actually benefit college grades--which is what I've been told all along. Extracurriculars don't necessarily hurt your academics, in fact they can enhance it by giving you something else to focus on and enjoy. All in all a good survey.

  • Poetry or Music? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 )
    As a musician and developer with equal interest in both I have a hard time looking at my code and seeing poetry or music. When I look at code I see pure logic. (Go figure) That's not to say that logic isn't freakin' cool, however.
  • What's with the stupid ``&093;'' character? How
    did it creep into the posting, and got copied
    and pasted into so many quotations?

    -mi

  • Sourceforge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigjocker ( 113512 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:40AM (#3998592) Homepage
    I have started two projects on sourceforge. One was on behalf of my former employer and we released the source code of the whole system under the Jabber PL. The project is still there, but neither I nor my employer is still maintaining it. You could add it to the "Project Cementery" of sourceforge (if they had one).

    The second one was just registered a week ago. I have not yet released any files on sourceforge but have done so on my web site. Actually I opened the project just to have a mailing-list.

    I spend almost two hours a day in this project, with almost five hours a day on weekends and on vacation. I have even asked for vacations at work just to get more time on the project. It's an open source project, but, even if a would like to have contributors I still have none.

    So why do I do it? well thanks to it i just bought my new TV, freezer, laundry machine, DVD and PC. I give my project away for free, but charge for courses, documentation and solutions based on the system. As for today I have only had local customers, but I only hit the web last week.

    As for the wife and kids ... well they all are way too happy with the new items at home, you know.

    So they support me, I spend some time on my laptop and we all get new toys. Thanks to the LGPL (which is the license of my project and some tools I use within it).

    Maybe this is kind of offtopic, but wanted to share it.
  • Every programmer feels the same at some point, Some great project. As for the extra hour to work, it all depends on the Project.

    They should have used their 4 groups, and broken down the results more clearly (Statiscal distortion?? NEVER!). It would have been interesting how many of the 25% who do it for WORK, would want to do more?

    But there is something to be said for 4:38 AM, eating crusty pizze, and finding that one lonely pointer has been misreferencing all night.... Ahh, the good old days...

  • From the article:

    Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    so atleast 50% of thos interviewed were C# programmers? ...someone had to say it...
    • I've recently started doing some work in C#, and it's a blast. If you're one of those who found Java to be surprisingly "fun" after years of C & C++, then you'll probably find C# even more fun. I have. Essentially all of my professional work is Unix based, and yet privately I'm playing with C# and loving it. (Now I want it on Linux! [go-mono.org])

      But I'll have to add that I've had this experience with some other languages, too. The amazing power of Perl for example, after using C, for so many of those common "take this input data and process it in some useful way" tasks.

      And Lisp, just for the fun of being able to think that way and experience for yourself some of the more theoretical aspects of informatics.

      All of these languages have in common that you get to take a lot of the time you would spend thinking about how to avoid trouble in C or C++ and spend it instead thinking about how to create something useful, interesting, or fun.

      (They also have in common that they have to drag around a ball and chain of a runtime, which is why I have to keep going back to C & C++ for so many things... Fun's over. Back to work.)

  • Related Story (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In a related story, at a M$ developer's convention last week, 60% said, "With one more hour in the day, I would rearrange my GUI [program]." 70% of the respondents volunteered that lack of sleep was the most significant excuse of participation. Almost 50% of the respondents agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's like building stuff with Legos."
  • This survey was very interesting, and I'd like to applaud the authors for taking the time to do it. However, I have some sort of bizarre genetic defect that causes me to get cranky whenever someone uses the phrase "Generation X", so I can't help but foam a bit about slide 21 on v0.73 of the slides on the OSDN site.

    The slide is titled "Open Source is a Generation X phenomenon". Don't draw too many conclusions from this data - although most Free/Open Source programmers may be 21-38 years old now, I'm sure plenty of those larval hackers who are presently younger will join in the fun once they've got some more coding experience under their belts.

    I don't think the whole hacking phenomenon will die out in 60 years. So, although the graph shows a peak, what I think we're witnessing is the beginning of a phenomenon that will continue indefinitely (or at least until debuggers are made illegal).

    Oh, and I hate this whole "Generation foo" marketing thing.

    - Tim

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @11:20AM (#3998928)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • OPEN SOURCE TURNS ON HACKERS [osdn.com]

    "This project compared to my most creative experience is:"
    My most creative effort 13.9%
    Equally as creative 49.5%
    Somewhat less creative 28.4%
    Much less creative 8.1%

    So we have more than 50% saying that the work they do for fun, love, and recognition in their spare time is as good or better than the work they do on company time.

    This line on its own should be a cause for serious investigation into current software project management theory.

  • Most Open Source developers DO NOT get paid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Friday August 02, 2002 @11:44AM (#3999130)
    I personally reject the assertion that marketing slides like this make to investors (likely VA/OSDN investors in this case) that imply that Open Source developers are getting paid to do more than half of their work (slide 12 [osdn.com],22 [osdn.com], 23 [osdn.com], 26 [osdn.com] , and others). I would argue that 90% or more of Open Source work done by developers that are not working on "Company Products", is unpaid.

    I spent 18 months at an Open Source [linuxcare.com] company, and never spent a single hour during company time in 18 months working on anything Open Source, including my own Open Source projects. I was certainly "expected" to put in 10+ hour days on the weekends though, without any additional compensation "for the good of the company".

    Many Open Source developers are unemployed right now and still looking for work (259 days and counting for myself), and still contributing 100% of their time to their projects, while the "industry" at large continues to fire and lay off more and more qualified developers in the interest of "quarterly revenues". Trust me, nobody is getting more than half of their income from any company for working on projects that are given away gratis as the above slides lead you to believe.

    I also reject the assertion that Sourceforge is leading the way in this regard. Sourceforge has been drifting [advogato.org] for quite some time, and thousands of developers are leaving Sourceforge for want of better services every week. You don't see that on the surveys though, do you?

  • I'll wager... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by j0hn_paul ( 571365 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @12:00PM (#3999236)
    ...that the 50% that
    agreed that "When we prepare a program, it's just like composing poetry or music."

    have NEVER composed music or poetry.

  • What still surprises me (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i0lanthe ( 198512 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @01:12PM (#3999721) Homepage Journal
    ... even though it is not a novel finding, is "98% male" [osdn.com]. This is more skewed than CS graduate school, for pete's sake. Do women never have a need to write code (or tweak/fix someone else's open source code) in their spare time? Or are they just less likely to release it for others to use? (or less likely to answer surveys about it afterwards, maybe? :)

    Why?

  • The extra hour (Score:2, Informative)

    by qwerpoiu ( 532823 )
    60% said, 'With one more hour in the day, I would program.'

    Maybe they could get this extra hour if they stopped reading Slashdot...

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