How much do time do you spend programming at work?

I just wanted to roughly know how much other people spend their time programming at work if you are a developer. I am a Java developer and I spend about 98% of the time coding. I was just wondering because a professor I had in college said that developers only spend about 25% of their time actually coding. One reason I may spend a lot of time coding is that the work is usually assigned to individuals rather than teams. Here are some questions to get a feel of how other companies work: How much time do you spend coding? What are other activities that take a large percentage of your time? What is the size of the company you work for? Do you feel like you work on projects as a team or individually? Feel free to leave any other comments that pertain from your experience.

How much do time do you spend programming at work?
I dont think your professor was 100% correct. If you just got the job then you will most likely spend the majority of the time coding and as you get more experienced and familiar with the companys system you may end up doing more analytical work such as developing a database, analysing data, meetings etc.. After some time you start to think that even a trained monkey can program so they usually give those tasks to less experienced people so the more you move up the less programming you are likely to do. Also, it sometimes takes longer to test your work than it takes to program it.
Reply:There is a difference between "coding" and "programming". Most programmers are really programmer / analysts. They should spend a lot of time analyzing. They also test, debug, test again, train users, write help screens, meet with users, watch business processes, read professional journals, goof off answering YA posts on the corporate T-100 line and so forth. If you are devoting 98% of your 40 hours a week to grinding out Java code, you must be a regular coding machine. Do you have others who set the requirements, design the systems, test, debug and so forth? Or did you count that as "coding"?





25% seems about right if your professor meant to distinguish between tasks, as I did.
Reply:It really depends on the nature of the company and how the company works.





I work in an environment where no body really cares rats @@$$$ about computers... but without computers or internal programs... all hell will break loose.





We do have a team of IT guys here.. but not enough for 300 users. So I go here and there to support the IT guys.. which makes me 60:40 on develop/maintaining:IT Troubleshoot...


...not considering all the meetings and paper works and overtimes...








As to my friend.. who works in a strict development environment...


Most of time he spend his time coding... other time studies the languages.


Sounded like 80% coding, 15% studying, and 5% meetings.








Another friend who works in a QA environment...


According to him he spends 100% on coding 100% on meetings and 100% hearing the development team Biaatching in his ears 100% hearing his team Biaatching about the developers... which is a very team oriented environment.








Most* development environment is individual based...


because it's hard for multiple people to create portions of a code and expect everything to work perfectly once the code is put together.
Reply:I create web apps for my work,, i spend %26lt; 10% design and 90% programming (including debugging). I work for a university which has 500 employees. But as usual other things which distract you from your real job come inbetween. I work mostly individually
Reply:I am Sr. EAI Consultant in CMM5 Level company , working at Client site. We are sopenidng maximum time in Designing. Like Functional Designs and Technical design. If a Design is good then a Deveopelr can develop in few Hrs. We always propely document the Designs and then Send it to Developer to develop. So The way we work is


1%26gt; Functional Design : Collection Business Requirements


2%26gt; Technical Design : Converting Funcrtionalui in to Technical


3%26gt; Coding (Code)


4%26gt; Testing (UT , ST , AT , etc)





the first two parts always take 70% of time .





and about the coding in a day , when u r in job then Ur Team lead decideds or may be you decide ;-)
Reply:hmm ok i do about 70% coding and 30% design. other activities include graphics and animation, web design, and screwing around on yahoo answers - lol j/k - well not really... :)


the size of my company is pretty big, maybe a few hundred folks. we have project coordinators so i feel like i work as a team with them, but not really with the other designers because i work remotely and we kinda just do what we're all told.


that was a fun question, it was actually relevant to what i do! yay! back to "work"!
Reply:I'd say I spend between 35% and 60% of my time actually writing code (web applications,) depending upon the week and the time of the year. The rest is spent on design, testing, debugging, and managing the network here. I work for a small non-profit, and if it plugs into the wall, I am responsible for it...
Reply:I'm a Sr Java Developer for a medium sized company and I code about 50% of the time. But it's lopsided...maybe 12% one day and I have to stay late and code 100% another. Depends on the projects that are going on. My other time is spent doing research on technologies, going over documentation, meetings, or being just plain bored.