From: potts@itl.itd.umich.edu (Paul Potts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Amateur Programming? [Re: Is IM going to be repackaged?]
Date: 13 Oct 1992 20:05:23 GMT
Organization: Instructional Technology Laboratory, University of Michigan
NNTP-Posting-Host: 141.211.162.10

In article <01050166.fva9pl@joebloe.maple-shade.nj.us> joseph@joebloe.maple-shade.nj.us writes:
>
>
>It's pretty easy to find 50 hours a week of nights and weekends if
>you are sufficiently motivated and antisocial.  I've done it before.
>Enjoyed it, too.

It all depends, I suppose, on what your body can take. I know that mine
*can't* take working 40 hours a week, plus another fifty. Staring at a
screen all day, and then all night, and all weekend, has already damaged
my eyesight and my wrists to the point where I need to be very careful.
Also I'd say the lack of exercise and the result of grabbing most of my
meals at coffee shops and Taco Bell is probably not a positive investment
in my long-term health.

Don't get me wrong - I love programming under pressure and for long
stretches - it's often the only way to get deeply enough into my code
to work productively. Working 90 hours a week is a little extreme, though.
The original Mac design team put in 90-hour weeks getting the original
Mac out the door. The result was an amazing machine, with a lot of
technological advances, but a group of people who were tired,
dispirited, and who needed some heavy-duty recuperation before
doing anything productive again. I'm not saying it can't be done, but
working 90 hours a week for many weeks is a sure way to lose your friends,
your relationships, and your health. A programmer who destroys his or her
mind and body is not a valuable asset to a company for long.

I suppose many hackers don't have to worry about any of these things to 
begin with, however.   

This reminds me of a discussion that occurred on one of the other
comp.sys.mac groups. Someone from a fidonet gateway posted a flaming
message complaining that the system 7.0 disk images had not yet been
put up on Apple's ftp server. Part of their message went something like
"it's been nearly *24 hours* since the system was officially announced!"
Brian Johnson replied with words to the effect of "let me tell you what
I did in the last 24 hours. I went home, had a nice dinner, went to bed,
slept... <etc.>..."... "What did you do in the last 24 hours?"

>I don't want to impugn Mike Kahl and the other original authors of 
>THINK C, though.  I only wish that there had been a followthrough on that
>product.  As I have said occasionally before in this group, I have
>gone from being an enthusiastic fan of THINK C to being disheartened
>and disgusted at its snail-like evolution.  Borland, where are you???

I work with Borland C++. It is the best thing out there on the PC, but
it is far from perfect. Writing a C++ compiler is a *big* project. C++
is a *big* language. Even Bjarne Stroustrup called it "already too big
for our taste." The semantics are extremely complex. I would estimate
the effort involved in producing an excellent C++ compiler to be three
to five times the effort involved in producing an excellent C. There is
simply a lot more to worry about. It is also an imperfectly defined
language so far - people want exceptions, but they are not perfectly
specified by the language designers yet, so there are a lot of judgement
calls left for the implementor. Ditto with templates. People will want
to see a useful, complete class library with C++. That isn't a trivial
project either, especially for a company like Symtantec that is already
working on something as big as Bedrock.

Believe me when I say that it is impressive that Borland ++ is out there,
and such a fine product, but there are certainly areas where it could have
benefitted from a few months more work, especially in the area of the
class libraries.

>All I want to do is to write clean, reliable software and persuade
>the folks around me to do the same.  Lively discussions are terrific.  
>Weird personal habits are de rigeur.  The egos and thin skins, though, I
>can do without.
>

It seems to me that saying "I can be productive for 90 hours a week"
is, in itself, a form of egotism. Perhaps it's true, and perhaps you can
sustain this for a career. If you're willing to work like this, then I'm
sure there are companies who will be happy to exploit you. But there are
certainly also companies who would rather have employees with full, balanced
lives. Don't get me wrong -> I enjoy programming my brains out, and solving
problems, and debugging, and learning new languages. But every once in
a while I look around me and take the time to go for a walk, or see my
girlfried, or go for a run, or cook a meal from scratch. Programming is
more than just a job, but it isn't all there is.


-- 
"Everything I say is a lie." <--- potts@oit.itd.umich.edu ---> that's me!
"C++ will make your programming simpler, more efficient, and more fun!"
"What good is a computerized nose?" - Lou Reed
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer