How many hours do you spend aday and are those hours strictly coding or are things such as reading, audio books, planning ect included?
Lately, about 8 or 9 hours… usually unplanned. I’ll often look at the clock and be like, "What?!? It’s been 4hrs already?!? Where did the time go?
As a beginner, it’s mostly reading or looking stuff up and trying it out, playing with possibilities, etc.
When coding, it’s like 80% of the time debugging, tweaking, perfecting my buggy, junk code…but now that I know a little more JavaScript syntax, it takes me a lot less time than it used to, to write all these bugs! 
Seriously though, yeah 8 or 9hrs for a few days at a time and then I take a day or so off here and there… but I am currently unemployed, so all I have is time.
i spend different amounts of the day coding based on what that day entails. for example, i have finals next week so i haven’t been coding as much as i was before since i’m using that time to study instead. if you want a time frame for how much time you should spend coding each day, i’d recommend at least 20 minutes every day.
i suppose it would depend on the individual themselves. for me, when i say i spent x amount of time coding i refer to how much time i spent actually coding or searching up solutions for coding-related things.
How many hours do you spend aday and are those hours strictly coding or are things such as reading, audio books, planning ect included?
I would say an hour and a half sometimes more than that depending on what I’m working on. Same thing with planning the UI of a webpage. (unless I’m missing something with your question.)
I do this as my job, so about 40 hours a week. Is that all time spent typing into an editor, writing code? Absolutely not. Some of that time is meetings. A lot of it is conversations with people about what the problem that we’re tying to fix is, what fixing it will mean in practical terms, what fixing it will involve in technical terms, what we’re going to be working on next, and what difficulties I or my teammates have run into recently. A fair amount of time is spent searching through documentation, GitHub Issue chains, and StackOverflow. I also spend a lot of my time doing manual testing of my own and other developers’ work.
Programming isn’t just about typing code. You’re almost always trying to solve problems that aren’t quite like anything you’ve solved before. That means lots of research and collaboration. That said, when you can remove outside distractions, it is fairly focused on a specific goal. As a student, I do highly recommend trying to be in the habit of making your “coding time” as focused as possible. Jumping from one thing to another is something that we call “context switching” and it really slows down your progress.
8 Likes
It would be impossible for me to put in those kinda hours, would if I could though lol . But thanks for your reply and well done on being so productive mate, am sure you will be a software developer in no time 
Thanks for your feedback, I will definitely consider your recommendation
1 Like
What are some of the learning resources you would recommend? I have been told clean code is a great book?
Great advice… Thanks so much for your reply, I really appreciate it
Software engineers are paid to solve problems. It just so happens the solution will be expressed in code. In my opinion learning to code should use the same mentality.
While I was strictly learning, the total time I spent writing code was about 10% of the time I spent understanding the code. That means reading, conference videos, free online college courses, etc. And most importantly, reading other people’s code on github on a near daily basis.
I honestly feel it’s the only reason that I got my job and can build and troubleshoot code in my head. The core concepts don’t change, just the implementation.^1
And the reality is that you’ll be expected to figure out whatever you lack to complete your tasks. Although experiences vary, when I was hired I was just a React Dev, and now they have me working with angular (rxjs and typescript), dotnet, razor mvc4, docker, and sql server. All within 6 months.
So my advice?
Prioritize understanding over output.
Especially understanding other people’s code because chances are high you’ll be working on brownfield projects and/or legacy code.
- Here’s an example I particularly like: the DOM is just an instance of an object. Just like a class, where the attributes are properties in that class, and so are the descent nodes. When Javascript invokes functions like document.querySelector, all you’re doing is calling methods on that class. Event handlers are callbacks stored in a property array within that class, that get called when required. Similar to pupsub. Concepts like these get repeated over and over again.
1 Like
I thought I was just a bad programmer, lol. It’s nice to hear how other people spend 80% of their time re-doing what they just did… lol. I wear multiple hats. In 4-hours of coding, I probably spend most of my time, like you said, debugging and a good percentage looking up code and researching better ideas.
lol yeah, and I’m not even a programmer, just learning for my own knowledge and fun…hence I’m a professional “bug writer” for the time being. lol
I wanted to add another note… I am currently re-writing an old program. The previous programmer could just sit down and write code for hours. He seemed to just know it all. But going back, the code is not efficient or modular. Add to that years of band-aids and I spend most of my time breaking it so I can fix it better!
im learning to code and how much i spend coding per day vary a lot. If im engulfed on a project, it can go up to several hours, or if im learning a matter i have hard time with, i might do only sporadic sessions of 30-40 mnts, 3-4 times, to let my brain cool down. When i say coding, i definitely add time for processing the logic, looking up suggestions and documentations on the web etc. I wouldnt say typing the code in the editor should be considered the only substantial part of the process and it certainly not always is the most time consuming.
This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.