How many hours is that? 1900 - 830 = 1030, yes? 72.5 a week? Less an hour for lunch? That’s still over 65 a week, which is brutal if you wish to do anything else with your life. I hope you are making “overtime” – if not, it reflects the erosion of workers rights (if you are in the USA). Let me guess, you have been made a “manager” (aka bogus title used to circumvent labor laws and extract a maximum number of hours from employees. Check out Bernie Saunders and his position for raising the cutoff for how low the annual wage for a “manager” working unpaid overtime can be. [EDIT: just found this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/corporate-greed-must-end_b_7653442.html “We need to end the scandal of companies taking advantage of outdated rules to avoid paying overtime to ‘supervisors’ – often earning less than $30,000 a year – when they clock 50 or 60 hours a week on the job.”]).
First priority may just have to be figuring out how to get into a better position (as well as staying sane). Programming under those conditions is really rough, since programming usually involves deep thought. Giving it 15 minutes a day can be more painful than not doing it at all.
Is there a commute involved? I’ve sometimes managed to do a little work on public transportation. At my day job (music store), I sometimes jot down code or ideas to be worked on later. But that sort of thing depends on how much focus they are demanding from you and how tight they are about the breaks.
The only success I have with “programming” in short bits is to pick up something like this program: Enthuware.com. It can be set up to dole out X questions that you can do every day (using a setting called “Leitner Mode”. The questions can be very varied, so it will help refresh a diverse range of concepts. (There’s a learning concept called “interleaved practice” that applies. http://j2jenkins.com/2013/04/29/interleaved-practice-a-secret-enhanced-learning-technique/)
On one question you may be given String/StringBuilder tasks, another reviews legal Overrides, another concerns use of static and/or static blocks, order of execution, or rules of inheritance or etc., etc. My panel is the basic Java Cert panel, covering core Java. There are a number of tests panels you can choose from. It works for me, in part, because I kind of program “by ear” and am a little shaky on the specific syntax issues involved with different concepts. So, it is honing my understanding of the language, and enhancing my ability to read code.
I do 5 to 10 questions a day, only taking around 10-15 minutes when you include grading and checking out web questions from other students who are having troubles with the questions. The Leitner Mode is kind of like a game where you can see your progress (as questions move from “Unanswered” to “Learned” status) over time. It is the most cut-and-dried, easiest way to do a little bit every day that I know, even when other things are stressful and difficult. You can jump into it cold, and it feels like a nice break (at least for me). Not creative, but it keeps the programmer mind from atrophying, and is kind of fun.
