The secret life of a games programmer: I’ve lived my dream and it came up short

[Chad]

While not a professional game developer, I am a programmer and feel his pain of having ideas hit you in the darkest of night, and he described me perfectly at my desk during the day as the guy with 'headphones on and frowning at the computer screen'.

I have gotten out of the time crunch for the most part becoming a consultant. No long overtime hours without being compensated, no production support if issues come up and they need to get in touch with someone, and definitely no waterfall approach to the SDLC.

The hot new thing is AGILE, or shorter durations of development with presence of the business owner interacting nearly every day. This allows quick feedback to change your direction if needed without spending months working on something to show them before it goes to production to find out it was all wrong.