

How many hours of sleep do developers get? - maxwellito

It can sound silly, but I&#x27;m curious about this. When I read stats about commit times and or the post from wark milson (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;warkmilson.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;05&#x2F;15&#x2F;three-years-of-logging-my-inbox-count.html#time-spent-checking-email), I feel developers get 5 hours of sleep every night.<p>If you want to tell about yourself, please do.
(You can also talk about the amount of coffee you drink to balance)
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bowlich
More than when I worked retail.

If I looked at when I used to do customer-facing work. I could get by on four
hours a night. Show up with blood shot eyes and bumble through the day without
any fear of messing up.

Since my development career has taken off I can't go less than 9 hours of
sleep. It seriously impacts my work performance to not have a full night's
rest and I will even stop work and go home for a nap (or hit the gym, seems
like a 50/50 which will work to pep up the energy) if I start feeling my
internal engines roaring down.

I have done some late night commits. I do wake up in the middle of the night
with a burning idea. I occassionally stay up to work on a personal project but
I can only afford to do that maybe once or twice a month. I do sometimes miss
the days of menial service industry work where I could just stay up and binge-
watch a show on Netflix, read a novel cover-to-cover, or code through the
night on a personal project knowing that being exhausted at work wouldn't ding
me on the next review.

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Rainymood
Sleep is important. Like really important. You can be 'cool' and play
'rockstar programmer' for a couple of nights, but it will have some negative
impact on your long term productivity.

That being said, I too, have had some epiphanies at 4 am ... I average around
7-8, I wish I could get a steady 8.5+ but my body just won't budge. Guess I'm
stuck with 8 hours :)

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staunch
Sleep is the only magic brain regeneration mechanism that exists. Every other
option is drastically less effective at improving long-term and consistent
productivity.

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sheepmullet
9.5 hours on average. Skipping out on sleep in order to get more done only
works as a very short term strategy (effective for less than 2 weeks IMO, and
even then only for grunt-like work).

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kat
I need somewhere between 7-8 hours of sleep. I don't drink coffee and I
exercise 3 times a week. I find sleep matters more in the long run. I can
function on 6 hours, but after a few months I'm burned out and I end up
catching whatever cold/flu is going around.

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pathy
I try to sleep 8 hours per night, during weekdays it is probably closer to 7
but I don't function well on less than that.

I tend to drink about 3-5 cups of coffee per day so not that much. I do avoid
coffee after 3pm though.

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gamechangr
I sleep six hours and drink one cup of coffee about 2pm. I have monitored my
coffee intake for three years. I average 5.4 a week or ( 1 cup a day most
workdays)

I should mention that I run 4-5 times a week in the morning.

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lazyfunctor
I average between 7-8 hours. I drink maybe 2-3 cups of tea in a day. I swim
around 3 times a week, squash maybe once or twice a week and kayaking(white
water) on some of the weekends.

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mod
I don't function on 5 hours of sleep.

I work at home, and with 5 hours of sleep I'll literally just fall asleep at
my desk.

I need 7-9 hours, and probably average 8.5.

I really wish I only needed 5, though.

