This Destroys Great Code

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

The Secret Developer believes there is one thing that is destroying productivity in their team. It’s also making the codebase they work on progressively worse.

That one thing?

“It’s that thing that makes our developers slow, dozy, and unproductive. 

It’s a lack of sleep. It’s such a big thing that I used to call one of my colleagues ‘sleepy’ as a pejorative”

Sleepy

“On their first day at working their new job, Sleepy slept in.

They’d be working on their second job at home as well as in the office oftentimes working late into the night.

I think they’d sleep in every week or so, or at least turn up to work with really red eyes each week. I’m not bothered about that (you look as you want, as far as The Secret Developer is concerned) but their productivity really suffered. 

I can now see that it is proven. Not sleeping enough destroys your productivity and the quality of your work.”

The disturbing trope of the sleepless programmer

Some developers think it’s a preferable lifestyle choice to cut the amount of sleep they get in favor of work.

Fuelled by caffeine and ramen the story goes that you are only a great hardcore developer if you’re working late into the night.

“It’s a weird idea that you’re only hardcore if you’re still working at 4 am or sleeping at the office. This is fueled by genius Elon Musk and other software developers.

The disturbing part there is pressure to do this even if your work gets done on time and perfectly well in the usual working day. If you’re not seen to be hardcore you’ll be judged negatively. It’s a horrible situation that we judge each other using metrics that are not helpful to the quality of our software.

That is, the less sleep we get the worse our code is.”

The truth of sleepy development

Cutting sleep destroys the quality of our code for the same reason that your memories are impacted when sleep-deprived: lack of sleep is bad for your brain. You should remember the causal link between lack of sleep and car crashes and the economic impact of lack of sleep.

Sleep-deprived development is just bad. Bad for the people. Bad for the code.

“I have worked to the early hours on occasion. When BlackBerry offered $100 for each app accepted giving a 36-hour deadline to get the apps in.

I stayed up all night getting apps in there on the deadline. I think I got 15–20 in total.

You can imagine the quality.

These days I know my work after 9 pm is simply terrible, and often needs to be redone in the morning. It’s not only a not sustainable way of working but for me leads to terrible work.”

The Evidence

When you build up a sleep deficit as a software developer your performance decreases.

It’s a performance killer and one we should take into account when we ask developers to stretch their work into the night.

“I think the only reviewing code should be done late at night.

I’m joking of course. You should do it during the day instead of not at all.”

Conclusion

Sleep is essential to good work.

“On that note, I think it’s time to get some rest. Goodnite!”