Whether you write code, or administer server instances, chances are that you have a decent amount of maintenance to do. This might be fixing a bug in code, whether yours or someone else's. It might be reindexing tables or even running periodic maintenance routines that can't easily be automated. There are any number of tasks that might require an administrator's attention, but are essentially the equivalent of the tedious activities that are involved with existing items as opposed to new creations.
I ran across this piece on Ars Technica, and I'll admit it sounded silly at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that 90% of time spent on maintenance of some sort, and 10% spent on new items might be accurate. After all, it seems there's not shortage of work being done to tackle bugs, tune code, or enhance a feature that wasn't quite right the first time. The more I think about my career, the more I think that I've spent more time fixing things than actually working on new code.
If you think about your workload, do you fix things or create new ones most of the time?
Give us a rough idea of how your coding time is spent. Are you more of a craftsman that develops new widgets for your clients to use, or are you the handyman, repairing and improving things that weren't built well enough the first time.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
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