[zmj]

I don't think that's true. I consider myself an ok coder, but I'm lazy. I work in bursts, but even a good day is likely to be less than six hours of actual work. Bad days are near 0. If I had the work ethic of the parent commenter, I could get a hell of a lot done in a reasonable amount of time.

Some of that laziness is because I'm not crazy about what I'm working on. Being truly honest with myself, though, it may be an internal defect that will prevent me from becoming a great coder until I get over it.

Anyway, that lack-of-laziness is what I think the parent was attempting to describe, not 80-hour weeks.

[dmbaggett]

It partly depends on "stage of life" as well. Most of the outlier coders I know are 40+ now and don't work 80 hours weeks; nor do they ignore their families, etc. However, all did at one time in their lives, and all still have a strong work ethic. Work ethic often goes along with long hours, but beyond a certain level of experience, I see excellent producers working smarter and not just harder, to use the cliche. It could be that it takes the proverbial 10k hours to get to that level of experience; I don't know.