I recently read a Game Development magazine that was devoted to the career of making games. They had a few interesting, but small, articles that broke down a day in the life of various parts of the industry: Programmer, Artist, and Lead Designer.

Since I'm just starting out my education, and only in my second semester, I have a hard time visualizing massive programs and how they're made. Every program I've done has been completed in less than 1000 lines of code and a few hours time.

So if you don't mind sharing, I'd be interested in seeing what it's like from the professionals. Something sort of like:

8:00 am: Arrive at work and pick up my psuedocode from the secretary

8:30 am: Eat breakfast in the free cafeteria while studying psuedocode

9:15 am: Begin coding

12:00 noon: Break for lunch with free catering from Steakhouse

etc etc

What I'm really interested in is how do they split something up into chunks? Do they just tell you we need a working menu system for this store register by Friday and it needs to do this, this and this.

What do you do when you finish a project?

Is there always something else lined up to start on next?

Do you just do support stuff for the old stuff like adding features, fixing bugs?

This post has been edited by Smarf: 10 Oct, 2007 - 08:29 AM

I go to bed or to the pub.

Anyway, all the options are possible alternatives, it really depends on where do you work. I usually have a couple of projects going on in parallel, and support/bug fixing/adding features can be requested any time.

Nothing is just as simple as picking up an assignment.

Larger projects are completely thought out (although not always tested to perfection) with the developers hitting paper-work first. Once everyone knows what they are doing the work begins. Granted, it doesn't mean that your approval is required, but from my experience, I have not just been thrown into code.

However, fixing code, or debugging is a different story =-)

It is hardly as simple as picking up assignments. Teams I work with, we sit down and pound it out - heres what we need how do we do it? I usually wipe out a couple note pads just on that and developing logic.
I have yet to have a day where I followed the same pattern day in and day out. Heres my shift come in and pickup where you left out. Then fit executive meeitng in between the managers and research that or test this until breaks and fix the break. And of course the neverending "add this - no go back - hmm no what about this" from one person or another.

The closest pattern I can give -
Get in - setup laptop - load up on coffee and fill water bottles and dive in - and maybe remember to take lunch - then go home to the family.

1 & 2.)
You have tons of (boring) meetings with people who can't tell a monitor from a keyboard to workout the specs. Usual those people have no idea what they want or they change theire minds everyday. Either way you have to make a concept and maybe a prototyp with the little information you've gathered from them. After you finished the concept/prototyp you present it to them and now you get useful information like ... how the program is supposed to work.

The coding begins. Code, Test, Debug, Code Test, Debug, Show progress to client, meeting, Code, Test, Debug ...Finish the project,That's about it.

3.) If it's a large project, there's always a little party with drinks and stuff for all. Oh and maintain it

4 & 5.) Usual I work on 2-3 projects parallel and of course I have to maintain other code/fixing bugs

So my working day looks like that

Between 8.00 and 8.30 AM arrive at work. Power on my computer, get me a coke and shower my plant. Then I check my mails and begin coding

Between 12.00 and 1PM 15 minutes break. Eat somthing and get back to work

Between 5-6PM go home