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Discussion on: Want to write defect-free software? Learn the Personal Software Process

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eljayadobe profile image
Eljay-Adobe

Serendipity. My coworker and I were discussing how stressful it was to be a software developer.

I had pointed out that being a doctor, or police officer, or politician, or pretty much any other profession was far more stressful than being a software developer. (In general. I believe supported by stress reports by profession substantiate that software development is amongst the lowest stress professions. Ripley's Believe It Or Not.)

The thing that we had noted was that software developers take on stress. We are invested. That's not a bad thing... unless it becomes harmful.

So please be aware of when our own predilections become harmful. Ease up on the throttle.

PSP, in moderation.

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bosepchuk profile image
Blaine Osepchuk

I really don't know how stressful our profession is compared to others. The CDC puts computer programmers at #8 for suicides. So we are between police officers (#6) and doctors (#12).

Source: ctvnews.ca/health/suicide-rates-hi...

The statistics aren't broken out by gender so that could be skewing things because we know men kill themselves three times more often than women and our profession is overwhelmingly skewed towards males.

My guess is that lots of the stress in our profession is caused by unrealistic expectations (both internal and external).

So, yes, I agree, don't stress yourself out over PSP or anything else if you can help it.