It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science

Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by weinzierl on Saturday May 16, 2015 @01:21PM (#9556866)

    I suppose software engineers are the exception, since 
    the popular notion "they just sit at computers all day 
    typing arcane things" is actually true. : )

I know you are joking, but it has to be said. In my experience most software engineers spend considerable time in (formal or informal) meetings.

According to "Mythical Man Month" the average productivity is 10 lines per developer per day.

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by SomeCallMeTim on Saturday May 16, 2015 @01:27PM (#9556883)

Yeah, but MMM also mentioned a 10x productivity range between average and exceptional programmers. 100 lines per day isn't too shabby.

I just try to work with exceptional programmers. :)

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by jes5199 on Saturday May 16, 2015 @02:04PM (#9557016)

I try to be LOC neutral. A good day on a healthy team lets me delete at least as much code as I write.

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by SomeCallMeTim on Saturday May 16, 2015 @05:51PM (#9557760)

I agree that LOC isn't an ideal metric. But there isn't really an ideal simplistic metric.

Out of curiosity, I thought I'd look at a recent productive day. In actual numbers, my 42 check-ins totaled 409 new lines of code compared with 213 lines deleted, so close to 50% (not counting check-ins with simple line changes).

At the end I had several new features implemented and a lot of code refactored to be cleaner.

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by forrestthewoods on Saturday May 16, 2015 @05:37PM (#9557718)

The best days are when you delete more code than you write. If the only thing I did was delete code I'd be soooooo happy!

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by maxander on Saturday May 16, 2015 @05:28PM (#9557698)

Well, yes, I'm simplifying things a bit. Although, now I actually think of it, I would be curious to know how average time spent in meetings stacks up for software engineers versus other professions- scientists, architects, accountants, etc etc etc. Certainly something someone might want to consider when plotting out their career path, but I don't believe I've seen anything looking into it.

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Re:It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science by minot on Saturday May 16, 2015 @01:23PM (#9556870)

I wouldn't mind spending 40 hours a week in these inane meetings if business didn't want me to get stuff done.

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