Thread: Is programming a very time-consuming process?

It is normal for a programmer to take weeks, even months to finish a program - no matter how big or small it is, right? (I'm trying to be realistic about my future.)

Originally Posted by Norm

It all depends. It can be hours, days to never finished.

I see. The bottom-line though, is that a program sells enough as far as finances are concerned, isn't it?

SOG:

Take this for what it's worth. I have a good friend who is a higher-end Java engineer out in California. He and I have had similar discussions before.

Understanding the syntax is well and good, but you must learn how to design software, as well. And designing takes place "on paper", as it were. By "on paper" I mean either designing the look/feel, modules, and such on a whiteboard, or in Visio, or heck, even on paper (although you could use a lot of paper that way). You may want to look into a book on designing software, as well as design patterns. Check Amazon, I'm sure they'll have something.

And good design should always happen first, before you write a line of code. And yes, it can take time. It may seem frustrating, but it can (and often does) make coding easier. The reason is that if you lay things out clearly on paper, then you have a road map of sorts as to what to do. It also might allow you to do error checking you may not normally see.

This has stuck with me as solid advice.

Let's say you want to do a simple command-line calculator. Your design might take you a few hours (remember, this is before you write the code), and you may consider things like: what type of input will it have (i.e. integer only, or floating-point), how many values will it perform operations on, what types of operations, and what happens if something goes wrong (error checking).

So yes, just the design aspect can take weeks, or months. Especially if you get stuck and are unsure what to do, or what direction to take with a specific piece of functionality.

My friend in California told me this anecdote, which I think is a good lesson:

He was working on a final project for his Masters degree. He was on a team of I think 3 or 4 other people. His team decided to actually design their project before they started coding (they had a total of two weeks, I think). He said the other "teams" (who jumped right into coding) would do the proverbial "point and laugh" because it didn't seem like his team was getting anything done, all the while, the other teams were struggling while writing their code.

His team actually started coding with (I believe) 3 days left until the project was due. They finished the coding in about 2 and a half days. The other teams that did not design first struggled to finish the project.

But if you're studying Java, I'm sure you'll be employable for quite some time. I don't think computers (or Java) are going away any time soon.

haha, great question. I myself not a programmer but willing to learn java for my marketing client. I find it too boring, too time consuming. But one of my programmer friend said they are just copying google everytime. How true is that?