Coding question

[andrewducker]

As an estimate, what percentage of your coding time do you spend writing algorithms and what percentage do you spend finding little niggling problems where something in the development environment/system/language you're programming in?

Comments

[diffrentcolours]

I spend most of my coding time chatting to people on IRC and discussing which CPAN modules will do my work for me.

I love Perl :)

[elwe.livejournal.com]

40/60

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I'd say 75% the latter, but that's a property of the particular project I'm working on right now.

if I may recategorize

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

Adding big new features: 5%
Adding minor new features: 20%
Tweaking stuff that works fine but the client wants changed: 20%
Debugging: 55%

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

New features: 20%
Debugging: 80%

Probably because I hate debugging.

[gwenix.livejournal.com]

You've hit my percentage and attitude pretty well there. :)

Well, I was going to say 99% in niggling details. Thinking about it harder, it's probably not like that at all, but I just notice my frustration when up against the deadline and I can't figure out why the program is doing THAT still! much more than when I'm doing happy work like plotting it out. :)

[broin.livejournal.com]

40: 60, ish.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Depends on what I'm doing. It can be 10(orless)/90 if I am pushing the envelope (not quite so frequent here, but if I'm doign something weird, you can guarantee that NOBODY else in the world is doing it and even newsgroups don't help. I can't figure out if I'm a genius or just have to do daft things and do so in a seriously odd way.)

Typically, with (say) VB6/MSSQL, and an average work task, it is now about 10(or less)/90 as I've been working with them for so long (and I'm such a genius). I'm movigninto .net (on a course right now), so I predict that figure will change for a year or so at least.

Of course WAY more time is spent asking people stuff ("you want WHAT???" :-) ) than coding [as is usual].

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Architecture / Design: 15%
Coding: 10%
Debugging: 20%
Playing: 10%
Testing: 10%
Figuring out exactly what the users want: 85%
Arguing that my way is best: 40%