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Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#41

Post by sokoloff »

I lived aboard a boat for a week this spring with no internet access. We spent most of our waking time doing Galapagos things, but many of the multi-hour transits between islands there wasn't much to do.

I had downloaded a bunch of older Advent of Code exercises and spent some time on the transits solving them in a language that was relatively new to me (Clojure).

That might be better suited to a casual/low-stakes "15-20 total hours" rather than 100 hours where you want to be sure you can be productive, but all I did was just made sure I could do a couple of hours worth of work on my laptop at home with the wifi disconnected.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#42

Post by communtator »

da39a3ee wrote: post #25
eszed wrote: post #8

I don't know the circumstance of your tech exile, but I'd encourage you to take advantage of it to do something other than code! If you're going to be in nature, be in nature. If you're going to be with people, be with people. Those are the sorts of experiences you'll treasure, later in life, far more than a few more days of "productivity". If none of that applies, and you still want to learn something to do with tec…

It's really annoying to answer a question by telling the asker that you know better and they should do something else. This person cared enough about this question to ask it to a community on the internet. Have the humility to answer their question instead of telling them that you're wiser than them.

Tell me about it. Lots of people do it, but there’s something about programming that brings the alpha nerds that think contrariness is by itself interesting or impressive. So boring to talk to these people — it’s impossible to build common ground as they will disagree or argue a point not because they actually believe their case, but because they think that’s how you sound smart in a conversation.

Nope, you just sound like an asshole.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#43

Post by petespeed »

Cloud-cutting is an interesting journey, even if temporarily done.

Some offline alts:

1. Penpot for ui design 2. Llama for stackoverflow (from this thread, yet to try myself) 3. Python had devpi to cache packages. You might find something similar for npm.

I also found vscode plugins are mostly offline. A nuc-style box with docker + glinet router may help if you are not alone on this journey.

It might not align with current trend, but I would like to make cloud-cutting a norm, instead of exception.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#44

Post by da39a3ee »

thih9 wrote: post #27
eszed wrote: post #8

I don't know the circumstance of your tech exile, but I'd encourage you to take advantage of it to do something other than code! If you're going to be in nature, be in nature. If you're going to be with people, be with people. Those are the sorts of experiences you'll treasure, later in life, far more than a few more days of "productivity". If none of that applies, and you still want to learn something to do with tec…

I’ve also noticed that in threads about stack overflow people often complain that questions are answered with “do something else”. And here, “do something else” seems a popular answer too. Perhaps it’s how we approach problem solving in general.

I think it's laziness: rather than solving a specific problem, it's much easier to pick from an infinity of other problems you can solve.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#45

Post by da39a3ee »

I think the answer is fairly simple: you've got to bring a project with you that you know won't require downloading dependencies or online research. That's either because you've advanced the project to a sufficient state that you've got the dependencies downloaded, or because it's a project without 3rd party dependencies.

If nothing comes to mind, take a bunch of screenshots of leetcodes and try to implement them. It's good for programming skills, and good for your career. There's nothing boring or "work-like" about leetcodes; they are often touching upon academic computer science. It's a perfectly respectable intellectual activity and a good thing to be doing in the woods.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#46

Post by karmakaze »

da39a3ee wrote: post #25
eszed wrote: post #8

I don't know the circumstance of your tech exile, but I'd encourage you to take advantage of it to do something other than code! If you're going to be in nature, be in nature. If you're going to be with people, be with people. Those are the sorts of experiences you'll treasure, later in life, far more than a few more days of "productivity". If none of that applies, and you still want to learn something to do with tec…

It's really annoying to answer a question by telling the asker that you know better and they should do something else. This person cared enough about this question to ask it to a community on the internet. Have the humility to answer their question instead of telling them that you're wiser than them.

The 'do something else' is the community caring. Perhaps it's incorrect, but it's worth looking into. I can't imagine what situation is so competitive that on week of lost Figma design/React building/or learning something new so so catastrophic so as not to be permitted. Perhaps I'm misreading and the activity is so boring but required that carrying on computing is better--I've certainly done that.

The only time I would be very annoyed by such responses is if that's all the responses I got. Some of both is reasonable: perhaps I did pose an XY problem.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#47

Post by karmakaze »

I would suggest just one aspect, whether designing (find an offline tool), building (take offline React reference docs), or something else and go deep into that. Typically I take a toy project and build it with a different language/style and framework (or without a framework).

If I were in a circumstance like that I might take Ruby & Rails docs. I use it, but don't know to the point of memorization so many things that are uncommon but frequent enough that I have to take time to look them up each time they come up. Like how does Ruby symbol resolution work, exactly.

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#48

Post by ponyboy123 »

woofcat wrote: post #34
joshxyz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kinda weird they airgap but allowed thumb drives. that would be very hard for me though, coding without internet. he must be really good at his craft haha.

The one place I know that is this secure, you hand the thumb-drives to security who scan them and verify the contents are of no risk before handing them back. The same on exit.

I’m surprised they allowed security to review the contents, and didn’t just allow the thumb drives to flow in a single direction

Re: Ask HN: How do I code offline for a week?

#50

Post by trumbitta2 »

da39a3ee wrote: post #26

Ignore all the know-it-alls here telling you that you shouldn't write code while you're on vacation. If any of them knew anything about being in nature they'd know that the morning and evening are the times with most wildlife activity, and hence there are plenty of hours for coding. And they'd also know that even those of us who actually spend time in nature regularly don't spend the entire day staring at the fucking…

And OP would really like to know how
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