So far I've heard two answers to this question - early in the morning, after you shower and get to work, before you go to any mind-numbing meetings. You can actually get some work done now.
Late at night, when everything is taken care of, and you can just spend one to three hours working on something that interests you personally.
What have you found is the best time to get work done?
Naturally, there is no "best time of day" to code. But night time does have the inherently flow-conducive qualities (in most places) of being quietest and least prone to interruption.
This depends more on the person doing the activity than on the activity itself. Ignoring any enviromental conditions the best time to code is the time whn you are most productive, and that is something you need to figure out for yourself; there is no universal answer.
If you want to take enviromental considerations into account thn once again you need to assess this individually... my environment and daily cycle may be very different to yours.
I find I am more creative and can concentrate more in the mornings and before lunch. So I leave the more repetitive mind numbing tasks for the afternoon.
I would hypothesize that that last minute is statistically the most productive timeframe, with productivity generally increasing as one approaches the eleventh hour, shortly followed by peak productivity during the last minute.
That said, the recommended best practice is to actually produce as much as possible during the comparatively underutilized run-up to the aforementioned eleventh hour and last minute. It is considered to be a form of load management.
I find around 2:30 to 3:30 is my LEAST productive. It seems that no matter what I do, I feel like I am about to fall asleep during that time. Most productive is probably the morning, followed by late afternoon.
Don't know about other people, but I am generally a night person.
If we're talking about hours in the day I generally prefer the evenings.
Coincidentally, during a regular work day I'm least productive in the morning (surprise, surprise), right before lunch time I'm pretty productive. After that productivity drops severely, when right around the sun going down productivity increases to its peak towards the evening.
I code best between 5am and 8am before anyone else starts work. Silence and a lack of interruptions help
Normally, I'd say that the best time to code is in the morning. However, it is very annoying, when other people start coming to work (and each and everyone of them absolutely must shake my hand). So, it becomes the worst time of the day...
If I had a say in this, I'd forbid the hand shaking ritual...
The night time between 1 and 3 a.m. is supposed to be better for thinking because at this time the level of background noise is lowest. It's also good because your family is probably asleep, so you've got less worries or things to take care of.
Personally, I get the best work done late at night when everything is quiet and I have nothing else needed to do before going to bed. That way I'm not thinking about what I need to do next.
The best time of the day to code: Right now. Incidentally, this also takes care of procrastination problems.
Anytime that is not after eating a large meal. Anytime when I'm not hungry.