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Ohagorom Judith
Ohagorom Judith

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Coding at night

This is an article designed to prove to you that coding at night has been very effective.
As a programmer I generally prefer to start coding after dinner to wee hours of the morning before heading to sleep at almost all weekends. While working in the Salon, which made me so tired during the day, I would spend the late nights learning to program.  If you ask a random programmer when they do their best work, there’s a high chance they will admit a lot of it's late night's. Some earlier, some later. Some people are naturally not morning people so they sleep till noon and work afternoons and late nights. But maintaining a healthy amount of sleep.
I love coding at night due to the no constant interference whereby there’s nothing to disturb your aloneness. Coding during the day means having to deal with interruptions in the form of people, calls, texts and life in general. But at wee hours at night there is no one to disturb me, no social notifications to bug and I can code just on the projects i want to.
The tranquility of the night whereby the background noise of endless activity around you like cars passing by, people talking and whatnot become completely muted at night so much so I can have a pin drop silence. If that is not the perfect atmosphere to work or chill, I don’t know what is. You might say that we can have similar atmosphere at daytime by using noise cancelling headphones and getting your grove on listening to your favorite music. But constantly listening to music on headphones should be avoided to keep your hearing sense in good health. It is actually recommended not to use headphones continuously for more than an hour and take breaks in between. The quiet atmosphere at night actually feels a lot better for mentally stimulating task as coding.
Brain works best when its late night because It turns out that late at night/really early in the morning, the brain gets tired enough that it can only focus on one task, not on multiple. There will be flexible and creative thinking.
Night owls/Early morning birds are more intelligent which was proven by studies have beyond doubt that night owls/early birds tend to be more intelligent and creative than others.
When you code at night interacting with humans is minimum in this case There’s nothing better you can do than become a programmer. Not only will you not have to see them during because everyone’s asleep, you can avoid them during the day because you are asleep!
Again coding at night always makes me in the flow: I start working on the problem with full focus leaving behind the world around . At such wee hours I am much likely to get in the flow of things developing the project without thinking about things happening around. No matter the time you prefer to work on always keep in mind that developers need adequate amount of sleep just like everyone else because if i don’t sleep you tend to screw up more than i can, so i always make sure that i have that sufficient hours of sleep and have proper sleep schedule to prevent feeling burnt out and weakened during the day.
The core reasons i work at night or very early in the morning have to do with deep thoughts, flow, focus on one’s work.
The main lifestyle factors that affects coding at night are:
Freelancer or employees
Scholar of some sort
Have projects
Spouse and/or Kids
A popular trend is to get up at 4am and get some work done before the day’s craziness begins just to avoid distractions. You might ask what’s so special about the night?
I think it runs down to: The makers timetable, the tired brain and the luminance of computer screens.
You might ask why do we perform our most mental work when the brain wants to sleep and we do simpler task when our brain is at its sharpest and brightest? Because being tired makes us better coders simply because when your brain tired it has to focus. There isn’t enough leftover brainpower to afford losing concentration. Being tired makes you pointless enough that the task at hand is enough.
You might ask if you keep staring at a bright source of light in the evening, what happens? Your sleep cycle gets delayed.
Programmers work at night because it doesn’t impose a time limit on when you have to stop working, which gives you a more relaxed approach, your brain doesn’t keep looking for distractions and a bright screen keeps you awake.
Plan. Break down your tasks. Get a timetable of what to do each day and keep doing it.
There’s magic in the night time. The peace and quietness, the internal serenity. There’s just you, your work and an infinite abundance of time. You are alone.
As a society we know that smart, talented people work at night. Often in a lonely place, they solve problems mere mortals could only dream of.
I hope this article will disclose to many people that late night work schedule is the key to creativity and productivity for many open source programmers.

Top comments (1)

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Peter Vivo

"The tranquility of the night" I like this description, and it is so true. Here is 1:19 and I'm so tried, but you are true some wierd reason night cooding some times much more effective. For example I was do the next stepp to the fullstack with a simple commit. It is even surprised me.