Jeff's recent article linked to a time management example of the First Fit Decreasing algorithm, which talked about the Pareto principle (or, the 80/20 rule) of time management, that is, that 80% of the work we produce in 20% of our time.

Now we've all heard the programmer quote:

The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.

But all jokes aside, it is often as if 20% of your code is to do what you want, and the other 80% is to handle exceptions... so does the 80/20 rule really apply to developers?

Does anyone have any examples of why it does / does not apply to us?