phpBB and real life work

Hey folks,

my first blog entry here. I am not a good blogger, in fact i do not like blogging that much. But you are able to tell your thoughts sometimes.

First of all, i want to tell you something about developing phpBB in spare time and how it fits into real (paid) work life, for those constantly moaning about slow development speed.

I am employed by a successful company placed in website marketing/programming and technical solutions for other companies. Recently we merged with another company doing prospects, flyers, newspaper ads and other image related marketing. Due to this change, i have to work more than ever... i am going to work at about 9 am (between 8am and 9am i am checking my private mails) and working till 5 to 6 pm. This is from Monday to Friday, sometimes i have to do work at home at Saturday or after the normal work hours (because i am the only employee here - now with the other company there are three additional people, but they do not interfere with my work).
At work i am programming our websites, deciding and working out new technologies we offer to other companies (for example third content inclusions for mobile content and delivering these at third party websites or during a special campaign), as well as administrating all server we have (and this is more than one because of the amount of websites we host). Therefore i do not have that much time on my hands to do any phpBB programming during work.

Now, i am home, if all is well at about 6 pm, eating something, maybe cleaning the dishes or showering, calling friends, the common stuff.

If i am in the mood, i begin to power on my development server and doing some programming, thinking about how to implement this feature, how to extend the next functionality, how to do this, how to integrate that... sometimes i am only doing phpBB work at the Weekend.

Now, you can imagine how much hours i am actually working at phpBB during the week, it is not as much as i want to do (since it is still a lot of fun).

Sometimes i am "producing" nothing in a week, sometimes i manage to write up the complete PM thingy within one week, it depends on the spare time i have.

Now, if i would be able to program at phpBB full-time, i would probably be able to write up the amount of a week within a working day.

Another issue always getting a bitter feeling is the circumstance of reading something like: "to write good code takes time". This is of course true, but we do not sit there 8+ hours a day coding for phpBB, it takes time because we are not able to code 8+ hours a day. ;)

Hopefully you now understand a little bit why it is taking time (and more time as expected because of personal events resulting in someone not able to code for a few weeks or months).