51–60 of 86 posts
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
As others have been saying, the "prolific programmers" have a passion to program that doesn't get satisfied by coding from just 9 to 5. Personally I tend to have waves of intense programming around the clock followed by a cooling down period with either part of the cycle lasting days to weeks. Sorry for the shameless self plug but you should start small and try making a "One Hour Side Project" http://kolodny.github.i…
Your comment glosses over the fact that many open source developers do this for a living. It's not some side project that they just do after work. Sure, they could put extra hours in, but open source is not just a hobby
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
As far as being known, just do what you enjoy. If you enjoy it you'll produce quality work, and if you produce quality work then the rest falls into place. Play your cards right, get yourself into a position at some startup (or your own startup) doing what you're interested in.
I think it helps to be vocal as well, blog a lot, speak at conferences a lot, and so on. I'm not really this kind of person but I've seen others who get really popular from being "thought leaders", possibly more so than for any code.
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
There are a couple of important points I've learned along the way that might help you:
1) Some people can code productively 24/7, but those are very few and far between. For starters, they have the skill to concentrate hard for a long time and work in an environment where that is feasible. It's not feasible if the next cubicle over has a sales person in it who spends ten hours a day on the phone. Second, most of them tend to do it in bursts as it's extremely hard and draining to sustain that level of concentration and effort for hours and days on end. What you see is often the output from the bursts, but you don't see that they're then spending a fair amount of time doing different things so they can recharge their brains.
2) It's easier to do this when you're young and pull a couple of all nighters a week. This makes you a hero, especially in places that thrive on hero-based development, but you have to realize you're burning the candle at both ends. As you age and build up experience, you tend to be more productive simply because of your experience, but you're also not necessarily that willing and suited to pulling 16 hour days for extended periods of time.
3) Most importantly, your brain is a muscle. Exercising it improves its function much like exercising your body improves its function, but it also needs rest. If you look at the way top athletes train, they push themselves hard but they also allow for sufficient rest periods. It's the combination of exercise and rest that leads to the improvement. Take one or the other away and you either overextend yourself (and injure yourself) or you don't grow as much.
Yes, I read about programming and play with languages during my off time, but I try to satisfy my need to build things (which is what initially drew me into software) by working on physical things instead. Things like building/restoring a car or motorcycle, gardening, working on the honey-do list etc. Oddly enough they're not too dissimilar from programming as you still end up solving problems.
TL;DR - find a way to switch off, be it through meditation or whatever else works for you. Get enough rest and exercise the other parts of your body. Learn to recognize the signs of burning out and stop the journey before you get there.
Not sure if he comes here, but Sindre Sorhus[1] is quite prolific. The answer, though, is not satisfactory: He doesn't work. He moved to Thailand and lives off savings. Here's the answer you are looking for: https://github.com/sindresorhus/ama/issues/167 and you can search more related questions in the issues. [1] https://github.com/sindresorhus
I'm Sindre. I actually spent more time on open source when I did work. Some people cook or bicycle as a hobby. I code. I'm totally addicted to making things on the computer. I used to spend work lunches coding on open source projects. I lived in a remote place (Lillehammer, Norway) with few people around and not much happening, so I had a lot of free time after work. It definitely is tough working up energy to code a…
Thanks for asking this. I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers. I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME: - Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper - Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools - Use your calend…
As someone who has tried GTD and failed. Do you mind me asking a few questions? How do you deal with habits? What are projects and what are tasks? Is vacuuming once a week something you would schedule in a calendar? Would you schedule doing dental floss every night? Also, for big projects which would have a task list of several 100 tasks, many of which would not be visible to you on the outset, how would you deal wit…
inbox/collection: everytime I think of something i add it to my tool's inbox (omnifocus), so if we are talking and you mention a book or movie, i would hit a shortcut (or on my phone) and enter "watch american history x" done...
process: once a day, I would go through my inbox and categroize stuff... takes very little time... so the movie might go into my "movies to watch" project. implement signup page might go into my "App x project" etc... I usually add context as well so "call Joe about insurance" will have a "phone" context
review: this was the MOST important step in my process. I review my projects once a week on friday and make sure i don't forget anything. I have a recurring task to remind me to do a weekly review. This step was essentially the biggest improvement I did in my process. Omnifocus makes it easy because I can set when i want to review each process... so my "books to read" project is reviewed once a month but my "launch taskorami" project is once a week, etc...
Answers:
- I add some habits like workout every other day, or pray/meditate in the am, but i don't go crazy and add "brush teeth", "wipe butt", etc... - projects = something with multiple tasks or longer duration e.g. "baby proof house" with tasks like research cabinet proofing, outlet proofing, padding for table corners, buy gates for stairs, door handle proofing, CO sensor, etc... but sometime i don't turn things into a project so "replace sink", i will probably just add multiple tasks instead of a project like "find plumber", "buy sink" and so on. - the large projects get reviewed during my weekly review so i get to skim through the tasks and priortize accordingly. - for half-backed ideas i have several "reference projects" such as "movies to watch" "startup ideas" "places to visit" "open source ideas" "things to checkout" "blog posts ideas" and I usually set these projects to be reviewed once a month or even more.
The key is, it's a pretty flexible system, you just need to find what works for you. and like i said, you can use pen and paper a thousand other online tools - my favorite is omnifocus
Tool: I use omnifocus and I love it but the one thing I hate about omnifocus is that it is mac and iphone only which is the reason i built taskorami.com - it's in private beta but I haven't really worked on it for a while - been busy with baby twins. You can check it out and use the invitation code "vip" to signup (private link: https://taskorami.firebaseapp.com/a/) . It's built on ember and firebase and has a responsive/mobile site but no native apps.
PS: sorry for typos and bad grammar - too tired to edit :)
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
Honestly until I met my wife, I spent the majority of my time at home building open source projects I knew would save me time later at work, and probably more time overall because the code will be less specialized to the project. This was almost every single night after work. My wife came along and showed me though that there is more to life than programming and I have to thank her for that. She's a wonderful gruf wo…
How did you guys meet if you were most at home working on projects? Genuinely curious because I'm having trouble simply finding women.