Why Programmers Work At Night

by Swizec Teller

A book about programmers, by a programmer.

Genres: Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Hamid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book for programmer and those around theme. It explains why programmers work at night and give some precious advises.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

First part of the book goes quickly to the main theme, author is young programmer, experienced and can write about feelings very shortly, but accurate. Start of the book has a nice pace. Now I will definitely think about distractions before I ask any programmer for anything :-) Mayby I'll try to rebuild a little my daily schedule to use more from the morning part of the night.

Then the book slightly goes away from the theme - to the daily routines, feeding, drinking and - a little bit about stimulating drugs (?) On the beginning of book author uses citations from studies, in part about caffeine there is almost no citation. Only sentences about that caffeine is the best. The whole chapter about coffee and other stimulants is a little bit weird as it goes (from my point of view) against previous chapters about not to work long hours, better building your daily schedule etc.

I've been expecting maybe more about the sleeping and how to build your day, if you are a programmer (like mentioned pomodoro - which is fine), distractions. A little bit more about night owls and morning larks. Not about low sugar or fat, not about the workout.

I am definitely not a lean reader. Lean publishing, versioning books like in GIT or somewhere else is not for me. I've bought this book and even I can have any newer versions, I don't want to. I am reading books from beginning to end. Obviously once. If I find a TODO comment in book, it looks more like a piece of programming code than the book. I am not saying that this type of publishing is wrong, it is wrong for me. I will not read this book twice and find any changes. I would like to read it for the first time, but finished (I've read version 0.4, 70 % of book done).

Anyway, thanks for that book.

[Matthew Horvat · Rating 3 out of 5]

After seeing this book referenced in his future book called Senior Engineer Mindset, I went looking for this book. Turns out I couldn't find anywhere to get a copy till I stumbled on the github for the book in progress.

This book definitely started to explain why programmers work at night, but seemed rather, well incomplete. I did see references in other reviews that it was a book in progress and I wonder if it was ever finished. If you can find the github go ahead and read it. It will definitely go into detail about distractions and the programmers on going quest to avoid them.

The rest...well could be avoided generally. I wonder if this book was ever finished if my rating would go higher?

[Pim · Rating 3 out of 5]

But more importantly, it’s very difficult to make a logical case that X is not a five minute job. Of course you can add a small button to a webpage in five minutes. Ten minutes tops. It’s no more than a line of code. How could such a small piece of the puzzle possibly take more than five minutes?
Exactly because it’s a piece of the puzzle.

When systems grow the complexity no longer lies in individual pieces but in the system as a whole. For a programmer to add a small five minute feature they have to first consider the whole system.

อื้มมมมมมม

[Yosif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read, the 'Flow' concept is interesting. Seems like extremely pushing your work boundaries, which sounds too much for me. But definitely got some takes from this book.

[Danguba - Željko Mitrović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Not my usual cup of tea but never the less it made me sad I don't have more time to read it every time I had to put it down. It is well written and funny remarks keep you glued to it. I literally LOL'd few times :) So if you are a programmer or live with a one be sure to read this book. It will teach you some new stuff for certain. You can get it here (https://leanpub.com/nightowls)

[Vikram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here are the answers and insights to questioners to know why we as programmer or developers work at night. Because for us that's the real time, without any sort of disturbance, to be able to give full attention to problem or code as per demand.

[Foo · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay read, but there seems to be a number of areas that will be expanded upon in future versions.

Looking forward to future revisions.