Coding requires prolonged intellectual focus. Prolonged intellectual focus brings insanity. I dislike insanity, from top to bottom. Therefore I no longer code. Not much, anyway.
Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
211–220 of 316 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#212Mainly because I’m helping other people be able to code. One of the interesting things about the 10x engineer meme is that they’re 10x because they improve the productivity of their team. Well extend that to DevRel and that’s maybe another order of magnitude or two of effect again. Extend that to the average person looking to build and it’s another order or perhaps two again. Hopefully the stuff I’m doing now will ge…
The 10x engineer being an enabler is a nice interpretation but the original definition of a 10x engineer is a skilled engineer working unhealthy hours. The enabler 10x engineer may be true - even though I've never found managers so good to multiply their team output dramatically while I've met 10x engineers building incredibly fast and slaving away for a chance to make millions. It could be that's because I found ena…
I worked on a team with a 10x coder, who was 10x because he improved the rest of the team. Would jump in when people got stuck and unstick them by seeing the yak immediately, where others would just work their way up to it one stack frame at a time. Had a better knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on the team than they did, and knew how to nudge them towards the work they would excel at without making them feel incapable of the other work. Would unstick people by finding out how they could help other people who were also stuck and vice versa. He got promoted to manager after basically doing managing the way it should be done, without us ever making us feel like we were being managed. And it really was a golden time for our team. Except he quit not long after. Not sure why, but I suspect management brought along a lot of other responsibilities (interfacing with accounting, HR, higher-level management, etc.) that he didn't really enjoy.
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#213I'm studying Latin and working with customers instead :D
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#214Code you write is code everyone will now have to maintain forever, so naively, you want to solve problems with as little code as possible, and maximize the value being generated by your codebase. So you should be spending your time on... properly validating the business value of your projects, properly designing what a system should look like on paper, properly considering use cases and edge cases, finding what code…
> Code you write is code everyone will now have to maintain forever False. You may throw code away. Also, did you visit the link?
Sure, you can make a bunch of funny comics:
Someone is furiously writing as much code as possible, and the next panel is someone else furiously trying to delete it as fast as possible.
Someone stayed up all night to rush to complete something after someone asked for a feature, and then the next day they find out that guy didn't even work there.
A team spends 5 months refactoring their webapp to force it to fit into 512mb, and then in their final presentation someone asks, why not just buy a 2gb stick of memory? https://thedailywtf.com/articles/That-Wouldve-Been-an-Option...
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#215I am trying to choose which pet project to dwelve in.
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am getting paid to get things done in a good manner. If I wanted to have a house built for me, I would not expect to pay somebody and immediately have them start laying bricks without them looking at the land, taking soil samples, sketching up drafts of what the house should look like within the constraints available, and then plan the foundation of which to start building. In the software world most of those wou…
I dunno, if one of my team members was constantly coding up non viable prototypes instead of communicating with people, writing up proposed solutions and alternatives, and seeking a bit of consensus first, that would strike me as a much worse waste of time.
Prototyping takes less time than writing up the requirement in paper. And customers can give more accurate feedback watching the prototype than reading the docs.
It rarely happens that once a prototype is written, the developer finds out it was all a wastage and the customer wanted something quite different.
Think of the prototype as a Photoshop mock, but interactive like the real application.
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#217I am paid to solve problems, programming is one part of that, thinking about the problem and the code is a prerequisite to programming. Sometimes one needs to step back and let things sink in rather than continuous action (programming)... while doing that you can even play games, I'll admit some activities are better than others for the purpose of de-focusing your subconscious - but sometimes you also just need a sho…
> our job's don't stop when we go home (or turn off slack) either, we are essentially paid to think and our brains do not care about the arbitrary thresholds set by 9-5
I used to believe and practice that, but that's what led to a lot of life dissatisfaction and burnout and near-burnout.
Sure, not saying I never think about my work outside work hours, but these days I start work in the morning, stop in the evening, and in general don't worry about it until the next morning. That tends to make the hours I am working much more productive, and avoids huge variance in productivity as I swing toward and away from burnout periodically.
And I say this as someone who loves programming, and did it as a hobby before I did it professionally. For a good 8 years I didn't want to touch a code editor outside of my job; I just had no creativity and desire left for my own projects after being always-on work-wise for so long. Now that I've enforced more separation between my professional and personal lives, I'm able to do it as a hobby again sometimes without being burned out on it after work is done.
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#218[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#219Ehh, was watching Youtude videos on Siggraph animation. One thing led to another, going down the rabbit hole of math videos.
Re: Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?
#220Pretty severe bout of executive dysfunction.
It's February, it happens. As manifestations of seasonal depression go, it's really not bad, compared to spending a month wishing I wasn't alive.
Been keeping up with exercise, eating right for the most part, seeing friends a little. I'll get through it.