On the php[architect] site they've shared the contents of one of their regularly published columns - "The Dev Lead Trenches", written by Chris Tankersley - covering burnout of developers from their day-in and day-out work.

The tech industry is a double-edged sword. On the one side, we (generally) have well-paying jobs with nice perks, but on the other, we can easily slip into not only boring, repetitive work but figurative death marches. The former is used by most companies as an offset to the latter, but that rarely works out well. This leads many developers to come face-to-face with burnout.

He starts with some suggestions of ways to detect burnout in your own life including lack of motivation, sleep, and other emotional types of signs. He then makes a list of suggestions of how you can avoid burnout in your own work:

• set working hours
• use vacation time
• take 15 minute breaks
• take up hobbies outside of development

There's several others in the list too, so I'd recommend checking out the full article for more information about each.

Matt Frost (one of the two hosts on the Loosely Coupled podcast) has a new post to his site about some of his own experiences and advice around avoiding burnout.

Writing software is an incredibly gratifying profession; the idea that you can take a problem and find creative solutions through the use of technology is what drives a lot of us forward. What happens though when the drive is gone? What happens when that nifty little side project, training course, blog post or book goes from being nifty to being a drudgery? I came to this point a number of months ago and stayed there for a while, having now come out of this funk there are some things I learned that I'd like to share.

He talks about some of his own trouble with burnout, the project he was involved in and what it taught him about dealing with it (and life in general). He gives some sensible advice including "don't sit at your desk all day" and "prioritize things". The advice is simple and to the point - avoiding burnout is something only you can do for yourself. Waiting for things to "just get better" isn't going to work.

In this recent post on Reddit.com, a developer asks the community about some of his feelings about bugs in his software and his focus on quality:

No one has told me this and I don't need them too. I feel like one bug that has a negative impact on the user experience is too many bugs. I've been programming for over 5 years professionally and I still introduce bugs into my code. [...] I don't like the expectation that I (and maybe others have) that my code must be perfect when I am not perfect. I don't like the fact that it only takes one mistake to affect so many people. [...] I'm wondering if others on here have every felt this way. What have you done about it?

Suggestions in the comments talk about everything from dealing with the apparent burnout the developer is facing, a reminder that no code is bug free and some recommendations of testing and bug tracking to help make the quality of the code better (and give visibility into the level of work being done).