work

Agile project and amount of Documentation

What kind of documentation you'd recommend to support for Agile project? What are the core metrics you use to detect amount of documentation needed? Do you think you can store all of project info as TFS work items? ...

How long does it really take to do something?

I mean name off a programming project you did and how long it took, please. The boss has never complained but I sometimes feel like things take too long. But this could be because I am impatient as well. Let me know your experiences for comparison. I've also noticed that things always seem to take longer, sometimes much longer, than ori...

Do you have a hobby development project?

Do you have your own hobby development project, that you like to work on your own? If "yes", could you please tell a bit more about it (links are welcome)? What kind of project is it? Did it help you professionally? How? Is it open-source? Do other people use it? If "no" - Do you want to start one? PS: This question came up after t...

Truncating Method calls

This is a subjective question as I want to gauge if it's worth me moaning at my co-workers for doing something which I find utterly detestable. The issue is that a bunch of my co-workers will truncate method calls to fit a width. We all use widescreen laptops that can handle large resolutions (mine is 1920x1200) and when it comes to deb...

Should I take some work on the side?

I was just leaving a client site today after fixing a few problems and they seemed pretty happy because one of they guys asked me if I want to do any work on the side (outside the consulting company I work for). Do you think this is too risky a proposition to take up even if the work is unrelated to what my company was doing there? ...

Is it common to have no control over your work computer?

I posted a comment on /. the other day, and somebody responded with something along the lines that people may be browsing at work where they have no control over which browser they are using. This struck me as kind of odd, as at work, I'm allowed to install whichever software I want, so long as there is nothing without proper licensing...

Best Time of Day to Code

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...

How long do you program before you (need to) take a break?

I'm only a hobbyist programmer, so maybe my body isn't used to it. But I've found that I can only code for a few hours (usually 3) before I need to take a break. I move around quite a bit while I'm sitting, so it's not because of back pain or anything like that. Nor do I suffer a lot of eyestraing because I have a habit of glancing arou...

Count work days between two dates in T-SQL

How can I calculate the number of work days between two dates in SQL Server? Monday to Friday and it must be T-SQL. ...

How to stay motivated on the job?

Hi All, I've been working as an engineer professionally for 15 years for a number of different companies. My question is how do you stay motivated at work? I can generally be easily motivated if I'm working on design, but that seems to be about 5% of my actual work hours. Most of my work seems to end up being fixing problems in existi...

How much unpaid overtime do you work ?

Considering coding is as much a hobby as it is a "job" to most developers can I ask what sort of overtime people work and do you get paid for it or do you do it for the love of it ? ...

Job change, to get more time programming

Lately I have been bogged down with my job. I'm working on open source software all of my free time(outside of my job) and that is my passion. However my job zaps me for energy with endless meetings, talks with dumb customers, ridiculous deadlines and a boss riding my ass from the start of a project to the end(even though I'm the top pro...

Top reasons why programmers are fired.

Have you ever been fired before, or one of your colleagues? What were the main reasons for him being fired? The objective of this question is to get a list/description of other peoples experiences too see if we can come up with a theme of why people are let go. For those that work for consulting companies, I would guess one of the mai...

How many companies would agree to this?

I'm a web/software developer looking to get clients for my own business. I'd love to be able to talk to lots small-business owners/directors in any kind of industry, about what their business does, how it works, and where it's perhaps innefficient. My goal is to find some kind of business scenario in which a software product could dras...

what are the characteristics of the "go to" person in the company?

As an junior developer in the company, I sometimes feel I can do a lot better if I have known more stuff or have certain mindset. I wonder What are the characteristics you guys think a "go-to" person should have and how you work toward becoming that person? Thanks! ...

quick-and-dirty vs. good design

What do you do when your manager wants you to implement something in a quick and dirty way and you just know it's going to backfire? My manager wants me to develop a web app for a client and to do it as quickly as possible. This is the first web app we're building for this client, and I think it's important that we do it right so that ...

Where should a C#/.NET alpha geek be looking for a job?

Just curious, at which companies do really good C# developers work? (I'm talking world-wide, not just in USA.) ...

Friday afternoons....

What do you do on a Friday afternoon at work when you've lost your drive to work? ...

What company would you like to work for?

I'm often thinking of which company would be the "best" ones to work for. Best working conditions, best payment, personal responsibility, freedom, and so on. Is it a pure software development company or is it automotive, medicine,... what else? Would it be a big company like Google, Microsoft or SAP or could it even be a very small co...

Releasing open-source without the permission of your employer

I am working on a project at work and see an opportunity to extract and abstract some functionality that is part of the project and release it as open source. I have a hard time accepting the idea that this functionality should remain propietary and believe the open source community would get a major benefit from it. Would this be un...