Spectralis devlog #46
—Hello again proggers—
Pulled the numbers on Stardance out of curiosity and immediately regretted it. 5 months of work. 338 total hours logged. On one release. This project is starting to look genuinely horrifying.
338 hours and I still can’t tell you where half of them went
Cat or dog? hours_logged += 1
Okay let’s get into it~
—Yap—
Not a features devlog, more a “stared at the numbers and had a moment” devlog. Stardance has spanned devlog #33 through the mobile decision in #45, and apparently that whole arc adds up to something a lot bigger than it felt like living through it one session at a time.
—The Great Suffering—
1 — 338 Hours, One Release
Total logged time on Stardance alone comes out to 338 hours across 5 months. Every individual devlog felt like its own contained grind — a night here, an all-nighter there — but seeing it all summed up in one number is a different kind of gut punch entirely.
2 — This Is Starting To Look Genuinely Horrifying
That’s the honest reaction. Not “wow, dedication,” more “oh no, this has been eating my entire life for 5 months and I only just noticed.” Both things can be true at once, apparently.
338 hours is basically a part-time job’s worth of overtime, cool cool cool
3 — Every All-Nighter, Adding Up
The 10, 11, 12, 15-hour sessions scattered across devlogs #10, #15, #17, #20, #22, #23, #26 through #28, #37, #39-#40, and #43 weren’t isolated incidents, apparently, they were just installments. All of them landed in this same 338 hour bucket.
4 — Mobile Scaffolding, Started
Following the mobile decision in devlog #45, actually started laying scaffolding for it. Also went through a pile of signup steps for Apple Developer and Android/Play stuff — half of which I’d genuinely never heard of before this. Onboarding for platform ecosystems is its own kind of maze.
a whole new category of forms nobody warns you about
—FAQ (no one asked these but they are here)—
Q: What is a “progger”?
A: A human programmer. You. The one who just found out their side project logged more hours than a part-time job over 5 months.
Q: Is 338 hours a lot for one feature/release cycle?
A: Subjectively, yes, viscerally so once it’s all added up in one place instead of spread across 13 devlogs.
Q: Was this number a surprise?
A: Genuinely, yes. Living through it one session at a time hides the total in a way that checking Hackatime totals does not.
Q: What kind of Apple/Android signups came up?
A: A pile of them, some genuinely unfamiliar until now — platform ecosystem onboarding is its own maze.
Q: Is this changing how work gets paced going forward?
A: Worth thinking about. Not promising anything yet.
Q: Is Stardance actually done after all this?
A: Getting closer with each devlog, but 338 hours in and still not quite there.
—This is the end*—
*end for now, hour totals permitting
PART!!!