2 years ago some friends and I started writing one song each per week (and met every Thursday to listen to our respective master-pieces). We mostly ended up composing and recording the songs on iphones the Wednesday night before (thank god for GarageBand), and after 3-4 weeks were producing more creative content in this compressed timeframe than we'd had been able to with no deadline before. A few months in we skipped a Thursday or two, and suggested the solution was to write one song per month instead. That was definitely not the solution. We didn't find more time to write, and the lack of schedule killed the momentum. My biggest regret of the last year is not sticking to it - however a friend just moved to our city with the condition that we'd get it started again with the weekly frequency, so I'm optimistic :)
Write Code Every Day
121–130 of 221 posts
Re: Write Code Every Day
#122I 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…
Hey, I just wanted to sign-in and comment to say that at some point in the past, I found myself reading your book website. I do recall back then it had way less chapters, and I remember hoping that it'd find its way to completion eventually. I see a lot of new chapters. Great work! Very good resource, too.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#123As much as I like this idea, I do wish John talked more about HOW he did it. "No More Zero Days" is a good thing as a target, but it's often unachievable.
For me at least, the context switch required between what pg calls the manager's schedule and maker's schedule is so huge that it takes hours to cross that gulf (that's what I'm mostly switching between anyway)
Do you just sit down and force yourself to hammer out code?
Re: Write Code Every Day
#124I tried to do this, but in the end I ended up getting a job at a fast food place (part time). It uses different parts of my brain (as opposed to freelancing), and forces me to stick to the schedule. I can't exactly explain it, but it really gave me a BIG productivity boost.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
[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.
This is brilliant. Thanks! Are there any other similar apps out there?
My favorite is 42 Goals.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#126ABC.
Always be coding.
Always.
Be.
Coding.
Re: Write Code Every Day
#127I 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…
Are you still in the game dev field? Great job on the book by the way.
Edit: Oh, are you the one whom Herb Sutter used his benchmark in the Build conference talk about C++ a few days ago?
Re: Write Code Every Day
#128I recently started the same discipline. I spent a good part of my career writing code then worked my way up to executive management and stopped. After several years as Director of this, or VP of that, my skills had eroded. Late last year I decided to take a sabbatical and get back into the game by applying to Hack Reactor in SF. It was an intense period of two months of pre-course work (18 Code School classes and a bunch of coding assignments), followed by three months of intense work on site where we went 11+ hours a day for 6 days a week. One of the disciplines there is to work on a short “toy problem” every morning for 30-60 minutes. Although I finished the program recently I am keeping up that practice as well as working on my real project, a new startup for social video. I’ll never stop coding again!
Re: Write Code Every Day
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congratulations! This is a thing of great beauty. I would like to write an iOS-centric game development book; this is truly inspiring. Just curious... what are your self-publishing plans (if you don't mind discussing them)? What software do you use for writing?
> what are your self-publishing plans (if you don't mind discussing them)? The book will remain freely available in web form in its entirety. When I put up the last chapter, that will include a nice redesign that should hopefully make it pleasant to read across most devices. Soon after, I'm going to start working on an eBook and print version. I'm not sure how I'll do the eBook yet, but I'll do some investigation. Th…
> The book is written in markdown, so it should be fairly straightforward to eBook-ify it.
I put my "toolchain" to do this up on GitHub, which really is just a Makefile that feeds things to Pandoc: https://github.com/steveklabnik/words
Re: Write Code Every Day
#130Does working toward your side projects without necessarily writing code count? There are some days where I devote myself to figuring out something on my system that's essential for my side project, and those days I don't necessarily write any code.