The Dreaded Programmer Burnout, And How To Avoid It.
I have just reached the end of my four year degree in Forensic Computing with heavy development components, which was an in-class 20 hours a week during the final year. During that final year, I also worked 40+ hours a week as a software consultant (a role I continue to the day — building, testing and evaluating software in a wide array of languages). Combine this with the 15 or so hours a week I spent writing code for personal projects, articles and various publications, and I think it’s relatively easy to see how I was teetering on the edge of the dreaded burnout that programmers live in fear of.
Burnout is the mental effect that anybody, but in particular programmers, feel when building software consistently for months and years on end, without breaks, with constant high-pressure deadlines, and an ever changing and growing playing field, that manages to keep you somehow disinterested and engaged at the same time. It can cause programmers to leave the field, to retire prematurely and can lead to depressive episodes in some individuals. What burnout could be considered at its fundamental level, is a high degree of stress.
A great way to keep yourself from burning out that I have found is to find a community who share the same field as you. For example there is a mobile application DevRant (not promotional or sponsored) that can…
