Programming and stress.

[Bodybag]

Am i alone in the feeling that programming must be one of the most stressfull jobs. Usualy you have terrible deadlines.Users with only the basic skills on computers.People wanting to know every 5 minutes where you are with the program and in my personal opinion people don't know what they want.You ask for a spec and you get a strange dazed look.

[techmanbd]

Not really, I feel that when I am programming, I lose some stress because I get into a different world and block all that is around me. I like the challenge of figuring out things.

And for the people who don't know what they want, document everything, like emails to them and CC their supervisors. So when they come back and try and say something, you pull out the documentations.

[Bodybag]

I am not talking about the programming part.I am talking about the rolling out part , progress meetings and beta meetings.I work for a big company and any mistakes on our side could cost alot of money.Some of the programs i have written now has over 90 users working from the same SQL server so if there is any problems guess who they phone.

[samsmithnz]

Some parts of development are definetly stressful, for me its deployment, something always goes wrong no matter how well your app is tested.

 

I find some meetings frustrating, but I can't see this ever changing, you're always going to have users with an approved budget, but no idea of what they really need (just what they want..)

[PlausiblyDamp]

Unfortunately what they want is often 'can you make it like our current paperbased | dumb terminal based | word of mouth based system' and they have no intention of participating in any constructive dialog in terms of function spec, user requirements, reporting needs etc. That is what I find most stressfull as you know they will later pick holes in everything and anything.

Luckily not something I get involved in much at the moment though....

[quahog]

Yes, many people that I develop for dump me to some SME who thinks no matter what I say, I am writing a program that will replace them!

 

Most of the time their proecesses are so screwed up that anything I write would just increase their productivity but not replace them. I have been that subject matter expert so I know the fear, but it is tough to work for people that hate you.

 

I love programmimng, but I am glad to get out consulting.

[techmanbd]

OK, I guess to answer your question about being the most stressful because of people, then I would have to say NO it isn't the most stressful. It is about the same of anything you develop. I fortunatly don't just program. I also build test boxes and automated machines. And beleive me when you are designing a macjine you get the same crap. They never know what they want, and alwasy want it done in a ridiculous short time.

[kahlua001]

When I was in college, I worked in retail. Talk about stressful during the holiday season. When it comes to finding bargains, you start to see the pure evil in people. Programming relatively speaking, is a stroll in the park.

[irasmith]

Talk about stressful during the holiday season

 

There is a reason I LOVE to shop on line ;)

 

I think every job no matter what the profession has its stressful moments.

 

For me, the stress is all worth it as when all is said and done I just like helping people out. I am always amazed at what "we" programmers can do, making something out of thin air by taking code and molding it into programs that do one thing or another. Just amazing to me how it all can work :)

[Merrion]

There is no production database

The machine with the front end app loaded is in Dublin

The machine with the front end app is needed in Paris

The data conversion has not been run

The ODBC settings for the front end app have not been set (see problem 1)

And we are going live on Monday...

 

Oh so much stress!

[Bodybag]

Exactly.What can go wrong will go wrong and probably on the same day you go live and lets not forget the joy of making a change on a live database. Oops should have left that field a varchar.

[samsmithnz]

Exactly.What can go wrong will go wrong and probably on the same day you go live and lets not forget the joy of making a change on a live database. Oops should have left that field a varchar.

 

'a' live database? We have 35 that are all the same in 27 offices around the world. When we want to make a change we have to plan a week in advance and then do it at either 7am in the morning or 11pm at night (quite often both)

[Bodybag]

There is no real off times for these databases.If changes happen then they are usualy live.Sometimes data on these databases needs to manipulated to draw specific reports or query certain transactions.What i gave above was an example.Being the person that manages the db , Adminstrate the programs and write new software makes it difficult to sit all day and test changes.