As the title says. I can't find the answer anywhere. I know that environments can speed it up and there are nice ways to get bonus dice, but is there any other way to shorten the interval, or is it just going to take a minimum of 6 month (3 in the programming environment I guess) to program an autosoft.

I would say only as a modifier to your dice pool for good tools. It is treated like a B&R skill, but the interval is at least 1 month. I would say you would need to be in full VR the whole time while programming, leaving yourself vulnerable without a lot of protection (virtual or otherwise).

I actually peg intervals to the work week. I assume a day interval is hours of solid work. A week is 5 days, and a month is 4 weeks. Extra IPs divide the time. Sleep regular lets to put in more hours. This is in no way RAW. I personally feel like a guy in full VR who only sleeps 3 hours out every 48 should be able to do more work than an un-augmented guy in AR.

But no will not find what you are looking for in the rules

i see your logic, and I would probably use it if I thought a character could devote that much time to a task, but if you are interrupted you are probably screwed.

I drop all intervals to hour equivalents with days being 8 hours, week being 40 hours, month 160 hours, etc. And then do what WeaverMount suggested, taking into account extra hours from Sustenance or Sleep regulator and total sleeplessness from Long Haul for a few full 24 days of work. Can crank out programs a lot faster, especially combined with a nexus programming environment.

But like was said, there's no official RAW rules no.

Thanks. I didn't think there was a RAW way to do it, but it was worth the try. I think I'll take the work-week suggestion. It seems very reasonable.

Also, while I'm thinking about it, is it possible to use an Agent to help program? For some reason I assumed you could, butI couldn't find it anywhere. The core book mentions people using them as assistants, and Unwired talks about using them as teachers, but I can't find a definitive answer, or how exactly they would get the appropriate skills.

strictly speaking, agents have no software skill. you can, however, get a drone autosoft for the software skill. technically, being a drone autosoft it is only available for drones, but since that makes absolutely no sense, i assume you could put one into an agent just fine.

if you are mindlessly following the RAW, however, then agents have no software skill so they can't program anything.

It will be faster in VR if you get the hot sim bonus dice. That's about it though.

Not sure if it's official, but yeah, I've given hackers the VR bonus if they were willing to use it. Then again, I also enforce the need for addiction tests for hot sim now and then, so my players tend to be slightly sparing of its use.

Yeah, that can be tricky, but I usually reserve that for those with the addiction flaw.

Thanks for all the help.

Good luck...

You can do a rush job to halve the interval of any extended test. It means you glitch on a 1 or 2 though.

Which is why you buy hits.

i do believe that the programming suite fluff talks about agents being part of the package...