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The 501 Developer Manifesto

501manifesto.org

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Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#81

Post by vetler »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #31

“It’s just a job.” It's just 8 hours a day. 5 days a week. Roughly 25% of your life. Another 33.3% is spent asleep. Maybe you commute to work; maybe that takes you 45 minutes each way. That's 4.4% of your life spent driving, walking, on trains or buses to get to your job. You're going to spend a small percentage of your life on the toilet; another small percentage in supermarkets buying food, in a kitchen preparing i…

This. A thousand times this.

We spend too much time at it to call it "just a job". Sure, I've been there ... close to burning out, hating going to work, wanting nothing to do with co-workers. But this is my life, and it's the only one I got. Life is to short to have a job that is "just a job".

Many probably can't just walk out of their "just a job" right now - they have obligations to their boss, they have to feed their family, etc. But the goal should be to work to change it, and make their jobs more than "just a job".

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#82

Post by f4stjack »

Nah, I don't buy it. Especially the last bits. I write a technical blog because it is your duty to educate nontechnical users about what you know. The old fable of teaching a man how to catch fish comes to mind. This is never a bad thing, and it makes your job easier!

Contributing to open source projects, user groups, reading books on coding and productivity? How CAN these be pitiable things? I personally think this is a step before being brogrammers, which I loathe.

Let's face it. Being a coder in this brave new world is akin to being a magus in the old times. You know things, you incantate words and verbs only which you and a chosen few understood and you create something out of nether, only real in your mind's eye. And if you deal with information, as they did, you have to convey it. This is something inherent to this craft. You encounter problems with something, you log it; you solve it, you log it. When you share it, many of the people who trod the path will solve the problem, sans the time you spent, and do more. When they encounter something and log it, you will know more. This is a balancing act, nothing more nothing less.

It may be just a job for you, but for me it is an act of creation and more than a job.

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#83

Post by mapleoin »

I'm at the beginning of my career. I moved to a different country because I couldn't find a job I liked in my own country. I really like programming and I started doing it in my spare time in high school and I still do it in my spare time.

But, I wholeheartedly agree with this article. I need to go home at 5 in order to keep liking programming. Sometimes I go home to program on a pet project or to learn something new in the weekends. Most of the time I try to do that, but life gets in the way. In a good way. My gf wants to go out or I find some new hobby or I want to go running or just stroll around in the beautiful city I live in. I have problems that I want to solve in my life. I think about stuff and read about stuff. I want to learn to build things with my hands, ride a horse, play two musical instruments, paint etc.

I'm not an insect. I don't want to tell people I'm a programmer and have nothing else to talk about (like some of the people I know in this industry). I want to have friends who aren't programmers. In fact I usually appreciate these friends' company a lot more. Because we talk about being human, not about being programmers.

I'm really lucky to have a boss and colleagues who are like this, too. Some of them are really bright people. Most of us have a big number of programming books we've read. Just because I go home early it doesn't mean I'm not passionate about my craft. I am and I constantly invest in getting better, but I hope I'm not doing it at the expense of being a real human being and having meaningful relationships with the people around me.

It's amazing to see the number of counter-arguments to this manifesto on HN after a year ago everyone was praising things like the 4-hour work week and getting more done in less time. Has that failed? Did it instead turn out that we can be productive sitting on a chair for 12 hours a day?

Or maybe the people who really are passionate about programming are just programming right now, because they want to quench their thirst for programming in the 8 hours they have today and then get on with other pursuits. And I should go do that now.

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#85

Post by zacharyvoase »

Drbble wrote: post #71
zacharyvoase wrote: post #31

“It’s just a job.” It's just 8 hours a day. 5 days a week. Roughly 25% of your life. Another 33.3% is spent asleep. Maybe you commute to work; maybe that takes you 45 minutes each way. That's 4.4% of your life spent driving, walking, on trains or buses to get to your job. You're going to spend a small percentage of your life on the toilet; another small percentage in supermarkets buying food, in a kitchen preparing i…

Do you take drugs to prevent sleep? Because sleep is stealing a huge amount of your life too.

It's fair to say that I love sleep :)

Indeed, very few people in our industry don't appreciate a daily hit (or two) of caffeine.

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#86

Post by egonschiele »

peteretep wrote: post #11

If you: Write a technical blog Contribute to open source projects Attend user groups in your spare time Mostly only read books about coding and productivity Push to GitHub while sitting on the toilet Are committed to maximum awesomeness at all times, or would have us believe it Much of this applies to me, and applies to me because I love programming. If you don't love programming, I am unlikely to ever respect you as…

+1. We pity you because you contribute to open source projects? I pity you for not having found a job you love. In my experience, the people who work on open source are the ones who innovate, create cool cutting-edge products. And then the 5:01 guys come in and maintain the code. Who is to be pitied?

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#87

Post by undantag »

gruseom wrote: post #28
undantag wrote: post #17

During our latest "crunch project", we worked pretty crazy hours to ship on time. One guy in the team works 6 hour days, and continued doing so all the way, with a few exceptions. As the rest of us turned to Zombies he remained calm, focused and sharp. Without him, we wouldn't have shipped as well as we did.

Did this cause friction on your team? Or did everyone feel good about the arrangement?

I really thought there would have been more friction. Of course everybody was affected by the tight schedule and initially bad their reservations about one of us not pulling his weight in hours, but as time passed we were all going to him for advice, asking him to review our code.

However, the people in management/business made some sweeping remarks about our team "not working as hard as the other teams" in passing. Makes me think that the further away from the code and actual productivity you are, the more important hours and arbitrary productivity measures become.

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#88

Post by cristiantincu »

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” —L.P. Jack.

Via Frank Chimero: http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/17609912323

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#89

Post by marxjohnson »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #31

“It’s just a job.” It's just 8 hours a day. 5 days a week. Roughly 25% of your life. Another 33.3% is spent asleep. Maybe you commute to work; maybe that takes you 45 minutes each way. That's 4.4% of your life spent driving, walking, on trains or buses to get to your job. You're going to spend a small percentage of your life on the toilet; another small percentage in supermarkets buying food, in a kitchen preparing i…

I was going to write my own response, but zacharyvoase has already written it.

Re: The 501 Developer Manifesto

#90

Post by Su-Shee »

Why are so many people making this an either - or?

Yes, I love programming.

Yes, I (mostly) treat work as 501 even though I (usally) love the work I'm doing, but I'm not owned by any company.

Yes, I decide over a job similar to "love" precisely because it takes so much time of everyone's live and I spend more time in the office with my coworkers than I spend with my friends, family and spouses.

And I still want to see something else but my editor (and I do really like my editor :) - art, books, parties, the city I live in - which I also chose by "love" which is why I wouldn't move for a job to a city I do not like - other cities, good food and other people.

So, I look hard to find a workplace I like to do work I love doing which fits into "having a life outside".

And exactly that enables me to have a choice EVERY DAY wether I want to do some hacking privately or have a nice dinner with friends.

But for many life decisions I'm on the side of the 501 manifesto's spirit: I wouldn't leave my family/spouse for a programming job at $glorious_company, I wouldn't move into some boring smalltown and leave all my friends and the opportunities of my favorite city behind just to do programming at XYZ.

This doesn't keep me from having two thinkgeek shirts TOGETHER with 20 others, going to a nerd conference here and there AND take two hours off to go into this cool art exhibit which is at the nerdy_conference_town right now, read a programming book once in a while on top of the pile of other books I read.

I totally accept that I'll never become a rockstar in programming with this life-style - but I might have hung out and gotten drunk with real rockstars on some of the parties I had time to attend or even played some rock because I had time to be part of a rockband. ;) (God, I hate the rockstar metaphor a lot.. :)

In the end it's about looking down on my life and thinking "it's a good life" - and that changes from decade to decade anyways. What I considered a good life with 22 isn't anymore what I consider a good life now - and yet I wouldn't change a thing of my 22-year-old life.

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