After reading all the comments I have a few questions. How long have you been programming and what are you running from? Prolific programmers are running from something. Loneliness, low self-esteem, etc. while programming you don't think about life. GTD sounds like a miserable existance to me. I've heard/read countless articles on how to become a better programmer while reading the same amount of articles explaining burnout. How many CEOs practice being a CEO when they get home from work. How many mechanics are being a mechanic for fun when they get home? Programming is a job. Every time I hear learn a new language a year I puke a little in my mouth. How many of you remember your code 6 months down the road. Please don't push being a workaholic on the OP. The OP is normal and all the people trying to convince him/her otherwise are dillusuonal.
Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
61–70 of 86 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#62John Carmack brought along a workstation on his honeymoon so that he could keep coding. I can't find the exact quote, but I recall him saying that he spent so many years coding every day that he was worried he might suffer from withdrawl if he had a week away. I think the lesson here is that some people put their craft at the center of their life and make it the focus of every single day.
From the perspective of someone with the opposite problem to burnout - having been stuck on where to get started for literally months - this is a really inspirational anecdote.
I definitely want to hear more about how the marriage situation worked out in this case though. I expect I could learn a lot.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#63Honestly 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…
This is how I feel as well. I used to put more time into open-source and just code in general, now it's more of a means to an end for me, with the odd "passion" project. Life is short, don't waste it all working, even if it's what you enjoy, there are many other things to enjoy and experience. I refuse to work with companies now that put over 8-10 hours a day in, it's just too much, and fosters a competitive environm…
Also, I would say, even if you think coding is fun or enjoy it, ask yourself if that's what you want to be remembered for, or if you had a year to live would you be happy with having blown it all away on software. I'd bet the answer is likely no. It makes me sad when people in the community pass away and it seems that everyone is just talking about their work, there's so much more to a person (and life) than that.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#64To be a prolific programmer requires time, effort and dedication. You can still be a prolific programmer if you are married and performing your family duties but the level of time and effort to do it would be less. It would require you to work smarter and have a solid-foundation that is built and have learned the fundamentals, before you are trying to dedicate your time to being prolific while slicing your time between work, family, personal, etc.
It is best for the single and young because it requires you to immerse yourself to learning, to solve problems and face difficult failures, it requires routine, and dedicated energy to learn, requires energy to go to the workshops/meet-ups/groups and be updated when new learning opportunity arrives. It requires spontaneity to still be interested in other things in order for you to refresh your energy.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#65I'm on my computer, essentially, every waking hour. I've been this way since I was a boy. I have two passions in life: programming and playing the drums. If I'm not drumming, I'm programming and vice versa. This is what I enjoy and thus I contribute to many OSS projects, manage an Apache project, consult to two startups and have a full time job. I do all these things because it's what I'm driven to do. I would go cra…
Exactly. Often people try to guilt me into not be behind my computer so much because 'there is so much more'. I know there is much more but I don't enjoy that as much as coding. And that has been the case for the past 32 years. From the moment I wrote my first lines of code behind my father his luggable (1) I knew this was what I wanted to do and I never got bored of it. Do what you enjoy indeed.
(1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Co...
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#66Honestly 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…
This is how I feel as well. I used to put more time into open-source and just code in general, now it's more of a means to an end for me, with the odd "passion" project. Life is short, don't waste it all working, even if it's what you enjoy, there are many other things to enjoy and experience. I refuse to work with companies now that put over 8-10 hours a day in, it's just too much, and fosters a competitive environm…
> I think it helps to be vocal as well, blog a lot, speak at conferences a lot, and so on.
This takes a lot of time too. I always get stuck trying to think about what to blog about, and someone advised me that I should do more projects so I have something to blog about. But then the projects take all my blogging time away.
Same goes with speaking, for me at least.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you guys meet if you were most at home working on projects? Genuinely curious because I'm having trouble simply finding women.
OKCupid. She made fun of me, I teased back. Went from there.
haha... that is exactly how I met my sig-o as well. I like your style.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#68The importance of habits appears essential in order to maximize the available coding time.
The modular food idea in one of the replies is indeed a great one that I do apply.
Getting enough quality sleep is a must, especially when learning new things. Add at least an hour.
Taking 20 min naps works wonders.
If course, nothing beats putting in the hours, provided the above is taken care of.
One useful thing I do is walk the dog daily without any music/podcast. Looks like it puts my brain in a kind of freewheel that helps me a lot in figuring out solutions. I do that when it is dark outside, stars, moon, night noises seem to have an impact.
An additional noon walk doesn't hurt.
Being part of an open source (http://pharo.org) community makes me aim for higher than I would on my own. These people are very inspiring and deliver awesome things. So I want do to it too as I see that it is feasible.
I am married and having a partner who understands the peculiarities of the line of work helps. We have a huge wall calendar to schedule it all.
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#69I've automated large chunks of my life. I have a JIRA for everything I do with customized workflows, and among many other projects I built this: http://hnalert.tk to mail me when subjects interesting to me come up on HN. I recommend reading 'Getting Things Done' and working at your own pace. Focus on the things you're motivated to do, not what you think you should be doing - that's what a paid job is for!
I'm getting an internal server error when I try to set up an alert on http://hnalert.tk
Re: Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is how I feel as well. I used to put more time into open-source and just code in general, now it's more of a means to an end for me, with the odd "passion" project. Life is short, don't waste it all working, even if it's what you enjoy, there are many other things to enjoy and experience. I refuse to work with companies now that put over 8-10 hours a day in, it's just too much, and fosters a competitive environm…
Also, I would say, even if you think coding is fun or enjoy it, ask yourself if that's what you want to be remembered for, or if you had a year to live would you be happy with having blown it all away on software. I'd bet the answer is likely no. It makes me sad when people in the community pass away and it seems that everyone is just talking about their work, there's so much more to a person (and life) than that.
If I had a year to live, I'd probably go about writing that physics (game) engine idea that keeps nagging me, but has way too low profitability prospects to put months/years into it.