Software Quality: “Get some sleep!”

This is the second article of my series of articles where we talk about software quality, and here I am going to rant on and on about something that you might have heard a thousand times. SLEEP! I can’t emphasize enough on how much even if you are not a programmer you should most definitely just to function right in your life you should good get atleast 8 hours of sleep on a 24 hour cycle and let me tell you why!
We have all been there. Tired! “Still grinding at it!”. I know you think you will fill better after you finally crack that one function that magically solves all the hunger problem in the world but hey.. let’s be more realistic.. will you really? I have been that guy sitting in front of my project hours after hours not even caring what time is it, trying to get that one test to pass, trying to locate and fix that one bug so that we finally get to the other side! You know what I felt the next day? Great.. ofcourse .. duh.
You know what I also felt the next day? I felt like there’s nothing else in the world that could fix that buzz feeling in my head and the tiredness in my body making me lose an entire day where I could have been productive. Ooops.. I also missed being on the software demonstration of my team which mattered just as much. People who tell you “Sleep is for the weak!” should be told well guess what since we haven’t found a way for humans to biologically go without it after years of evolution and in the modern era of medicine, I think I am doing just fine being weak just like the rest of human kind.
You are DEFINITELY not better when you boast about how much you only got 4 hours of sleep and are still barely awake. No! It does not show skills or how amazing of a super human bot you are, it shows you lack time management, prioritizing skills, and easily distracted even because clearly a responsible software engineer is not only a one who is hardworking but also someone who has all of those skills and knew how to get the job done in the time commitment he was provided.
Lets talk about some of the reasoning one might come up with to counter that. You can stay your scum master/ program manager/ product officer/ head tech lead/ professor / etc. gave you more than you could do in the littlest of time? Well! Then clearly that’s not right and the fact that they are in the position they are, they probably went through your phase and if not at least mandatory training on how they should not push you to the point of burning out. I believe provided you do have good reasoning behind it if you go ahead and address that, I assure you they will understand. No one expects you to turn into the guy came up with Microsoft or Google or Facebook by not sleeping at night.
Take a mental health day! Yes, that is a thing. Take a day off and not think about software or coding or debugging or testing or that algorithm you have been working on to be placed inside super human robots that will magically turn water into plutonium to feed the nuclear reactors for the company who has a grid line to the planet mars. It’s all good.
You know who is better than a coder that is amazing on Day 1 and is tired and burned out to barely function for the next 2 days. An average coder who went to work the entire week and was happy cause he went out to smell the rain and he did not burn out. So.. yeah.. basically .. get some sleep! Go smell the rain and all that good stuff! I assure you.. and it’s not just me.. everyone around can tell you.. FOR SURE.. you will write way better quality code when you are sleeping right than if you are not.