Personal life, family life, friends, work environment and everything that you can think that a programmer does throughout the day.
I mean do they really have fun? 😃 #SorryGuys
Describe your life as a programmer!
As a full-time independent/freelance developer, I have some freedom in my schedule but I find it's both a blessing and a curse so I try to keep to a similar schedule most days.
I'm usually up around 5am and clear my inbox, read RSS/Twitter, etc while having a couple cups of coffee. After that, I check Trello for any tasks my clients have added directly and prioritize my work for the day. Then it's time to shower, dress, and get ready to be productive.
Some days I head to the local coffee shop for a change of environment and other days I work at home for the controlled environment.
After the initial morning routine, I'm usually doing work by 7-7:30am. I try to do a couple quick tasks to get momentum going and then I always do the one task I want to do the least to get it out of the way and not give myself a chance to let it go.
Another part of my overall routine is minimizing distractions. I put the phone on silent (completely, no vibrate). I only read/respond to email first thing in the morning, at lunch, and at the end of the day. I make my clients aware of this so their expectations for responses aren't an issue. Sometimes I'll hit Twitter up briefly at lunch and other times not at all until after my "work day" is over. I don't have too many meetings/phone calls but when I do, I schedule them for the morning so they don't disrupt the rest of my day and my workflow.
I take two 30-60 minute walks every day to clear my head and force me to get away from the computer. They usually happen when I'm stuck on a task or have completed a larger task and want to reset before moving on.
I try to wrap up client work for the day by 4-4:30pm (unless I have a major deadline or am in a real coding zone). I live alone and (mostly) work from home so after I'm done with client work I'll put a couple hours into personal projects, learning new technologies, etc.
Then it's dinner time. After that, I'll put some more time into personal projects, read, watch tv, or fire up the Xbox - or some combination of those. I also make time for friends/family in the evenings (and on the weekends).
Then, go to bed. Wake up. Repeat.
I enjoy the lifestyle as a whole but it took a lot of years working full-time for others and over-working for myself to get to this point. The only thing I find I'm lacking these days is contact with other developers but I try to go to local development meet-ups and am active in a few Gitter channels and other online communities that give me exposure to some smart developers who push each other and share ideas.
I am married with two kids 6 & 2. Here is my day:
7:15AM - Alarm goes off.
8:15 AM - Wake up. try to get Ready for work.
9:00 AM - Ready to go. Have breakfast.
9:30 AM - Leave Home - Dive into traffic.
10:00 AM - Login at work, play with the Office dogs, get coffee, Check mail.
10:45 AM - start doing stuff.
12:30 PM - A game of table tennis.
12:45PM - Standup meeting with team.(daily scrum)
1:00PM - Lunch.
1:30PM - play with the office dogs again. go for a walk.
2:00PM - get into the zone. Do not disturb mode.
3:00PM - Coffee. Table tennis.
3:30PM - Back to the zone. churn-out javascript like machine.
5:45PM - Evening snacks. geek out with fellow office geeks.
6:30PM - Pushing things to test server. (some days things go live directly because no time to test.) hope nothing breaks.
7:00PM - head back home. dive in traffic again.
7:30PM - reach home. freshen up.
8:30PM - Dinner.
youtube, blogs, internet till I fall asleep.
Married programmer here! With 2 kids. Let me tell you about my usual work day !(Few Copy pasta from Marco's post)
08:00: Alarm goes off or my kid wakes me up! No need for alarm, but still!
08:20: brushing my teeth & have my hot cup of Tea.
08:30:Taking a shower, then putting on my office wear
08:50: Have cereal or some light breakfast.
09:00: Play with kids or kids play with me.
09:10: Convince kids daddy has to work.
09:30: Wave good bye to kids and off to work.
09:50: Sign in, Check official mails, then check reddit, hashnode and other forums!
10:00: Open bug tracker tool and see the task status!
10:15: Start assigning new tasks and get status of open tasks from team
10:30: Start working on tasks
11:00: Break! Go and have some green tea or lemon tea.
11:20: Again start working on tasks
12:00: Someone will interrupt and give some administrative tasks
12:20 I finish up that damn excel and thought of finishing up my task
12:21: Call from on-site team and we sort out pending items and clear doubts
12:50: Swear to get the task done with
13:00: So hungry, leave for lunch
13:30: Had great lunch and feel like browsing forums!
14:30: What? It's already 2:30pm! Started working on tasks.
15:00: Finished up task
15:30: Get status form every team member
16:00: Break! Again for green tea,
16:20: Come back, code review time!
17:00: Push the code to Testing server and inform testers to take care of it.
18:00: Waiting to get testing status!
19:00: Waiting to get testing status!
20:00: Waiting to get testing status!
20:05: Leave for the day!
20:45: Reach home and start having dinner
21:00: Play with kids!
22:00: Let kids settle down and open PC to watch Fullmetal Alchemist!
22:01: If not in mood for anime, let's play some CS:GO or KF!
23:45: Shit, it's too late! Let's go to sleep!
goto : Top!
4:50am - wake up for work - never hit snooze. Jump in the shower
5:15am - leave for work
5:25am - arrive - turn on the lights, go make coffee, turn on my pc (no one beats me to the office except maybe the boss if he couldn't sleep)
5:30am -> 1:25pm - work, read news, etc... meetings and such are random
1:40pm - get home - turn on the tv and take a 2-3 hour nap
4pm - wake up - clean up the house a bit, do dishes, vacuum cat hair, etc...
5:30pm - wife gets home, make dinner (usually together)
6:30pm - work on side project (or watch a tv series)
9-10pm - go to bed
Weekends are random - may work on side project, may do stuff around the house, or go somewhere (mall, downtown, dinner, etc...)
Going out is at will also - wife wants to go out to dinner or see a movie or whatever - day of the week doesn't matter, so long as there isn't anything pressing at the side gig.
I work 5-7 days a week 50-60 hours if I have to. I go out whatever night I want to and take the next day off if I do. This year I have been in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Denmark, USA, Canada. I don't make a fortune but my goal has been to have a flexible lifestyle and do almost what I want to and go where I want and work from there. I answer a bunch of emails, do some Skype calls and organize my work on Trello (so far). I do have associated myself with some partners who do some networking for me since I am not able to be in direct contact with clients so much.
I wake up around 10am have breakfast and coffee, I like to do running every second day and swimming when it's hot outside, but besides that, I'm not a big fan of a daily routine. I became so bored of doing the same over and over again and feel I don't have enough adventure in the prime of my life. In Cambodia every month we went on a motorbike trip around the country, I can't describe how great that was and how much it motivated me to come back to work. I think the complete absence of technology and modern life is a great way to distress.
I have set a future goal to take language classes next time I'm living in a foreign country.
As a ClojureScript enthusiast in China, few people use ClojureScript. Before that, I was a big fan of CoffeeScript, also not many people are using it. Well, some people are talking about them. I may say I have many friends on Weibo and WeChat, and people read by blogs. But I have fewer close friends. My parents are living in small towns but I'm in Shanghai, nearly largest city in China. All of these built an isolations around me.
So most time of the day I in the office reading and writing. After work, I just go home and lock myself alone in the room, opening my laptops, tablets, phones to read and reply about the tech news. When I get some ideas, I would write for a long while, in code or in Chinese, which makes me feel ease.
I barely have female friends to talk. Most girls don't like talking with introverted people like us. Or maybe I just don't get it. Many people in my age are from one-child family. Brothers and sisters are quite far away. And these factors add to the loneliness and distrust.
Some weekends I prefer to go out for a walk, in the parks, or maybe meetups. Sanguine persons would have more choices with there friends, but I'm not.
update: seems I missed the point. My schedule roughly:
An average work day (Mo-Fr):
So yeah, it might be fun, but adulthood and living alone add so many things to my schedule~
Well, me as programmer go to work from monday to friday, go to dance ome lindy hop on monday, watching tv shows, go to cinema sometimes, the weekend go to dinner, have fun, talk with friends, read a little.
2-3 hours nap, wow. I turn on a countdown of 45 minutes. Otherwise, I would stay awake at night. I can drink coffee/Redbull before going to bed and have no troubles falling asleep. But napping for 2-3 hours turns on insomnia mode - I hate that.
Senior Data Engineer
Anthony Young
Javascript Developer
This is a great question, I would have to say we do have fun...Sometimes. The challenges are what make it fun and all the cool new technologies we have to learn :)
So I try to start my day as early as I can usually getting up at...
5.30AM - Wakes up after 6 or 7 attempts at hitting snooze.
The usuals (Getting ready)
6AM - Out the door
If there is no traffic its a nice drive to the office
6.45AM - First one in the office (Most of the time). Switch on the lights, switch on heater by my desk (Its cold here in the UK).
Plugin mac laptop into 2 screens and toggle my timer of the task I am on. Check for tasks etc.
7AM - Breakfast time, then back to my desk with a coffee. Continue on tasks at hand...currently building out components in react from an application I built in angular a few months before.
8AM - another coffee or a tea to spice it up a little, have brilliant idea to rewrite and shuffle around a load of code to make it better.
9AM - Stuck on an issue, why is something breaking and the error message from MobX is not helping much at all. Figure out im not passing in something somewhere and all is well in the world.
10AM - Team catchup on what we are all working on, news etc
11AM - Almost time for lunch, I am always hungry...Continue coding in distracted way as food plays on my mind. Maybe grab a snack.
LUNCHTIME - Gym time.
1.30PM - Back to the daily grind, read an article here and there to improve my code. Eat lunch at desk at the same time, fit in some code here.
2.30PM - Coffee break, back to coding, quick google of an issue in console to find many stack overflows on how to solve the issue, scan between them and pick one at random. Give it a try and then repeat once I get stuck further down the rabbit hole.
4PM - Coffee break time and some chocolate biscuits to undo the GYM. Back to coding.
5PM - Leave for home
6PM - Usually home for this kind of time, see my 19month year old boy and get hugs and kisses, play for a few hours and watch nursery rhymes.
8PM - Put him to sleep, (Hopefully I don't fall asleep with him).
8.30PM - I'M BACK, time for the adults to eat and chill, sometimes I will get in some personal email checking time or try and hustle on my personal projects.
10PM - At my desk, Meditate for appx 10 minutes (Highly recommend it)
Maybe watch a movie or get ready for bed and try to get to sleep.
I find that I need 7 hours a night to function or Im in under sleep meltdown or oversleep meltdown mode for the day
So generally while Im coding I'm listening to a Podcast, Gary Vee, or Google music, or being distracted by questions from someone who needs to know something from me.
I am always trying to fit in my own personal stuff outside of work, but sometimes this schedule just kills me, I end up getting home and not wanting to do anything. Even thoe I feel its the only real time I get to work on things not related to work and maybe even learn the latest ES7 javascript thing thats about to pop.