>Of these options, what are your greatest challenges to productivity as a developer? Select up to 3:
I feel like this is missing an important option. "Boring work".
Right now I'm slogging through an unenjoyable project and finding it incredibly hard to focus and get tasks done. Its so hard to push through one difficult yet dull task knowing there is yet another difficult yet dull task right behind it.
I wonder though; a lot of work is menial, boring work. What makes that bearable for those that do it? Or is there enough diversity in there that keeps people there for 40+ years?
Because the people who become software developers do that because at first it required a lot of focus and creativity.
When they've done it for a while and have to implement the 34th variation of essentially the same thing, those are the same people whose mind wanders.
When I did menial, boring work, my mind could wander enough to play blindfold chess with my colleagues without making illegal moves, and I'd still be productive. But when my mind wanders now, I already have a browser open and Reddit is a few touches away, and you can't browse Reddit at the same time as writing code.
That's the other thing, there is a whole industry trying to grab our attention and keep it, and it's present in the same web browser that I use all the time during development.
Exactly the one I was missing. Also distracting Internet sites (which is separate from distracting work environment), but they wouldn't be as much of a problem if the work wasn't so boring.
Not going to lie, felt like a great deal of effort was put into not only the questions, but the multiple choice answers. Made it easy to breeze right through it.
Absolutely; none of it felt like a drag. Maybe a little in the language/library/framework section, but I skipped most of it as I don't do much webdev. Also 1 or 2 questions I wish used checkboxes instead of radio, but other than that, it was great.
I used to be, but my parents have moved to tablets. It's not that computers are too complicated I think, even if their knowledge has gotten rusty (my dad used to be the computer guy), but tablets are much easier to use, very hard to make mistakes on (especially ipads), and you can use them at the dinner table.
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Seems like this has the potential to skew the results quite a bit. I was going to do the survey on mobile, but wasn't sure whether the Firefox Focus content blocker would screw with things. I just hope I remember to do it later...
Edit: And I don't really like being forced to turn off my tracker-blocking extensions.
I'm fairly bothered by that non-linear scale in those graphs. Particularly because it's consistently non-linear for gender comparative graphs and linear for most others. To me it seems almost deceptive.
I don't mean to be accusatory, but I am curious about a reasoning for it.
I've grown bitter of so. The hall monitors heave gotten crazy in their flagging etc. It's frustrating. I've actually turned to Reddit of all places for help now.
Cmon you’re still banging on about that? It was a one off thing that they were pretty much crucified for. You bring this up a lot, and I don’t think what you’re arguing against has been a problem since.
It really depends what kind of work am I doing. I love classic rock, but hardly ever listen to it while coding.
If I'm programming something new, trying to solve a problem, or designing the architecture of my application, I need to be 100% focused on the task. Playing a song I enjoy, especially the ones with vocals, will take away some of that concentration. For these tasks I usually listen to electronic music (anything from Jarre, Vangelis or more modern ones).
If I'm working on something I have a fairly good idea of how to solve, I may also listen to some modern pop songs. I find their upbeat rhythm really boosts my work. Daft Punk is great here!
If I'm performing some dull / mechanic refactoring, then I might listen to some classic rock, anything from AC/DC, Dire Straits, Clapton and even Lynyrd Skynyrd, CCR, Joy Division. Unfortunately that's not very common.
(I know some of these bands are not "classic rock". This is just a placeholder term that "sums up" my musical taste).
More often than not, I listen to music using my vynyl records. Am not really a big fan of Spotify et al.
Curious fact: I'm Brazilian, and listening to Portuguese songs really annoys me, probably because it takes away some of my concentration.
Nick Cave, specifically "No More Shall We Part". I've been listening to that specific album when I need to focus for ~12 years now and that is what works, not the actual choice of music.
I feel like this is missing an important option. "Boring work".
Right now I'm slogging through an unenjoyable project and finding it incredibly hard to focus and get tasks done. Its so hard to push through one difficult yet dull task knowing there is yet another difficult yet dull task right behind it.