Sure everybody knows who I am talking about, i.e. those programmers who, while reflecting on their latest death march project, brag about having worked “day and night” for many weeks or even months in order to make that particular project a success. At first sight, they appear to be quite happy with their performance during that long periods of working overtime.

When looking at those projects from the outside, you'll get a slightly different impression, however.

Here's what some of the most respected gurus of our industry have to say on that issue:

• Ed Yourdon (Decline and Fall of the American Programmer): Caspar Jones claims that the average American programmer works 50-hour weeks ... But I have to say that I have not been impressed in the vast majority of DP shops I've visited in the United States. Most of them have a difficult time remaining in an upright position all day.
• Steve McConnell (Code Complete): This lusty tribute to programming machismo is pure B.S. and an almost certain recipe for failure. Those all-night programming stints make you feel like the greatest programmer in the world, but then you have to spend several weeks correcting the defects you installed during your blaze of glory. By all means, get excited about programming. But excitement is no substitute for competency. Remember which is more important.
• Chad Fowler (My job went to India): You can't keep up the pace of a sprint and finish a marathon. Though your short-term productivity will significantly increase as you start putting in the hours, in the long term you're going to crash so hard that the recovery time will be larger than the productivity gains you enjoyed during your 80-hour weeks.
• Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister (Peopleware): There Ain't No Such Thing as Overtime. Overtime for salaried workers is a figment of the naive manager's imagination ... Throughout the effort there will be more or less an hour of undertime for every hour of overtime. The trade-off might work to your advantage for the short term, but for the long term it will cancel out.

Apparently, for many of us it seems to be too hard to admit that we've sacrificed values like family, friends, youth, home, etc. for ... well, for nothing.