Time Spent Not Coding

The cluster discusses how developers spend the majority of their time reading, thinking, debugging, fixing, and handling busywork rather than actually writing new code, with many emphasizing that typing code is only a small fraction of overall dev work.

➡️ Stable 0.8x Career & Jobs
5,190
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9337
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
25
2008
84
2009
139
2010
174
2011
197
2012
195
2013
240
2014
222
2015
195
2016
270
2017
273
2018
258
2019
233
2020
329
2021
425
2022
417
2023
453
2024
366
2025
632
2026
66

Keywords

e.g LOC code writing code writing coding thinking write spend time spend typing hours

Sample Comments

greggman Jun 8, 2016 View on HN

I'm having a hard time seeing this as a win. Maybe I not understanding it. You say 70% of your time is spent this way. Just looking at my own coding there's just sooooooo much busy work. Add this field on that dialog, pass this variable to that other class, write that test, etc ... my point being 5% of my work is thinking about the problem an 95% is typing, testing, iterating. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

jquast Oct 3, 2018 View on HN

read more code than you write. for your entire career.

hakaneskici Apr 2, 2025 View on HN

This. It's usually all the things besides writing code that takes most of the time.

blks Oct 31, 2025 View on HN

Perhaps more time that you would spend writing code yourself.

Zev Mar 10, 2011 View on HN

There's more to writing code than writing it fast.

alisonkisk Mar 2, 2021 View on HN

How would you ever have time to write new code?

intelVISA Apr 22, 2025 View on HN

The final piece (writing code) eating more than 10% of your dev time "for decades" is a good indicator to find a new career imo.

_asciiker_ Sep 20, 2014 View on HN

this is so true.. we already spend a lot more time fixing and tweaking code than actually creating.

cedws Apr 29, 2024 View on HN

Less time spent writing code is more time you can spend thinking about those hard parts, no?

thenbrent Aug 11, 2010 View on HN

15 minutes that would be better spent writing code? :)