71–80 of 221 posts
I say: take three months off from even touching a text editor and practice guitar every day.
I think my system leads to happier, healthier human beings.
The best thing about the 'little and often' approach is how you get drawn into fixing something big just by starting to fix something small. Getting into The Zone for hours at a time is great and everything but honestly I'm starting to view the whole process as just clocking in keystrokes.
My gitstats (http://notes.darkfunction.com/gitstats/index.html) is showing commits on 56 of 85 days. A week of the remainder I was on holiday, and I tend to rebase quite a lot so actual days committed should be higher. But in that time I have written over 18,000 lines of code and removed over 6000. Almost a full iPhone application since January in my spare time, now onto the home stretch and couldn't be more pleased with the results.
I am a total convert to the "don't break the chain" idea. I started writing a book on game programming[1] about four years ago. At the time, I was working at EA, miserable, and highly motivated to have the book done so it could help pad my resume. I got a book deal (O'Reilly) then, when that fell through, another (Apress). I had a real writing schedule, and a very supportive wife, and I would work on it for hours at…
[HabitRPG]( http://habitrpg.com ) is totally awesome for this, a great motivator. You can setup "Dailies" so that when you're done writing your daily 500 words, you just check it off. Or set it up as a habit and give yourself a "+" whenever you get a new chapter done. I use it all the time for just these purposes.
That was a beautiful post. Currently I'm in the complete opposite modus operandi. I don't do a lick of side-project work during the week, and on weekends I take a modafinil(wakefullness promoting medication) and stay up nights on end to crack out as much as I can. I get an INSANE amount done on the weekends that I have the energy to pull this off, but it's horrible for my health. The rest of the week I have anxiety a…
no side effects from the modafinil? I take them very rarely pretty much only when it's of the utmost importance that something gets done by a deadline and even then i'll only take a half or a quarter.
I did experience one side effect -- paranoia. I became really paranoid about what my spouse was doing behind my back. I knew that there was nothing going on though, so I was able to finally make the call to get my doctor to take me off the medication. I'd imagine the situation would be much worse if you were paranoid but didn't realize that you were delusional.
Telling a programmer to write code every day is a bit like asking an aspiring carpenter to swing a hammer: it's a necessary component of improving your skills and building things, but it is also a narrow, technical task that has limited value in isolation. Having said that, programmers should spend at least as much time reading and thinking about code as they do writing it. You can write code for hours each day and d…
I'd agree with you if my primary desire were to improve my ability as a programmer. Unfortunately, at least at this time, it's not. My major concern is getting meaningful work done. I spend far too much time thinking and reading about technologies, techniques, and planning for the future - more time needs to be spent on actually implementing all the amazing stuff that you want to exist.
I was onboard with this school of thought for a while, right now it isn't my flow. I work hard as-is teaching WDI at GA. I commit code frequently, but I also really want to focus more on work-life balance at the expense of getting more done. This summer, I'm taking two months off to do Burning Man and travel the country via motorcycle. During that time I expect no code to be committed. Do I feel bad about that at all…
I agree with your sentiment -- I've been through long periods of little-to-no side project hacking. Like multi-year, long. I've been working on my current side projects for over two years now but I finally made the decision last fall to make the hard decision: either this is going to be something that I REALLY want to get out there (and thus, I need to work really hard to make it happen) or I need to be comfortable with letting it slowly progress over a long period of time. I made the decision to go for it, so I'm writing the code to make it happen!
But yeah, for every season there is definitely a different formula. In the next phase of my life hopefully I can find other things to bring this level of excitement and stimulation!
Really enjoyed your post, though. I think I might give it another shot from a different perspective.
I am a total convert to the "don't break the chain" idea. I started writing a book on game programming[1] about four years ago. At the time, I was working at EA, miserable, and highly motivated to have the book done so it could help pad my resume. I got a book deal (O'Reilly) then, when that fell through, another (Apress). I had a real writing schedule, and a very supportive wife, and I would work on it for hours at…
I chuckled to myself at this bit because it's the type of productive-but-utlimately-unnecessary task I'd find myself doing if I were trying to write a book.
Not trying to be a downer, that's an impressive streak and I hope your book does well!
Is your side project really this important to you? It's your source of identity and self-worth? I say: take three months off from even touching a text editor and practice guitar every day. I think my system leads to happier, healthier human beings.