[asolove]

Are you joking? I've worked as a programmer for 13 years, mostly in the same two languages. But my reading list is longer than ever and my thinking-to-coding ratio is higher than ever. Unless my employers are regularly lying to my face, they are pretty happy with the outcome.

[riazrizvi]

No, I'm not. Most of the time I spend writing code, not checking documentation, or APIs. I've been a programmer for 27 years.

[buzzybee]

This is going to be domain-dependent. The lower in the stack you go, the slower things move and the less likely it is you're going through wholly unfamiliar territory. Top-of-stack, user-facing code(of which web browser stuff is the poster child) churns endlessly; UI code you write today is likely to have a lifespan of a few years at best, if the system continues adding features and staying up to date with new platforms.

This is true, at least, until you hit code that touches hardware directly, and then you still get to encounter lots of new problems because the hardware is doing things that break your code.

[riazrizvi]

I think that if you are reading > 50% of the time, vs coding, then you are still learning your trade. I write for MacOS and iOS, lots of new material each year, it doesn't take that long to get through the relevant updates, though.

The times I've spent most time reading, are when I've transferred across industries, to capital markets trading systems, to web media, to web apps, to mobile apps, to big data, to VR/graphics apps. Each transfer involves an initial period of furious research, but even though the ratio of reading to coding stays high initially, I am generally able to start writing more than reading within the first few weeks.

I did spend more time reading the first years of programming. But I think you hit a watershed, where it becomes harder to find a treasure trove of ideas about software architecture, for example, in a new book, and instead it becomes more helpful to advance your art by experimenting, and developing, and analyzing your own output.

For what it's worth my main point was about the ratio of coding to research, and although the previous commenter disagreed, I think he also introduced a new point about the ratio of thinking to writing. I remember I used to spend more time staring at walls of code, or paper notes. Not anymore. If before my work was more chunky, now it is more consistent and smooth. That is a skill/discipline I developed. The article resonates with me because my commit frequency has increased since I have been able to improve my analytical process in this way.