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If you desperately want to learn to code, how can you possibly be upset by having no work responsibilities? This is the opportunity of a lifetime to learn it. If not now, when?
I spend a few hours a day at work and at home on it. I just don't have any confidence that it will actually pay off.
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I don't have anything to do at work that requires automation. Fair idea though.
Find someone that looks like they do repetitive work a lot and sell them on reducing their workload through automation.
I wasted most of my time and regret it.
It's not that easy to sit there and learn something with the stress of having a manager walk over and "catch" you doing nothing. In the last 6 months on the job I stopped caring if I got fired and spend all my time developing a few small C projects (I set up a complete developer environment). No one ever noticed or cared. In big companies, they want people in chairs.
Anyway, good luck!
I treated it as a paid job-search opportunity and put in my two weeks as soon as I got a good offer.
If you don't have that option, try to find anything you can build that would improve the lives of your coworkers and get them to use it. Put it on your resume and start looking.
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Find someone that looks like they do repetitive work a lot and sell them on reducing their workload through automation.
Why would I want to do that? I don't want to bother anyone. And I don't know how to automate shit, either. I just want normal, boring work to do.
If you want normal, boring work to do why are you complaining about having nothing to do? The most normal, boring work of all.
It's not (doing nothing productive and pretending to look busy when your boss knows you have no real work isn't experience that's going to open any doors elsewhere), and the more of it you have the worse off you are. So you should be looking for something else, if you can't make it something else.
Well sounds like a great opportunity to do some on the job training at work until you get tasks assigned or things pick up. I would sign up for an online training course Rails is a good choices or Laravel (Laracasts.com) or Wes Boss's javascript courses. Both of those have some free courses. Get learning and enjoy a laid back position while you can. Learn and look busy, enjoy the holidays, good luck.
Is there any hope that trying to learn this stuff on my own will help me get real work to do / a real job? Granted, I have a ton of academic accolades that I've never been able to get a potential employer to even glance at, so maybe the skills will help. I just doubt I'll learn anything well enough on my own...the best devs learn in pairs it seems. I wish I had a mentor here or something.
But pair programming with one experienced developer and someone who knows nothing is essentially tutoring.
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I spend a few hours a day at work and at home on it. I just don't have any confidence that it will actually pay off.
I can't tell you if learning CS concepts will pay off. But I can guarantee you it will benefit you more than spending 3-4 hours on HN or r/dankmemes.
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Why would I want to do that? I don't want to bother anyone. And I don't know how to automate shit, either. I just want normal, boring work to do.
You seem to be exhibiting signs of learned helplessness. You can absolutely learn how to automate something, if you try. If you want normal, boring work to do why are you complaining about having nothing to do? The most normal, boring work of all.
I am complaining about having nothing to do because I want work to do, to contribute to a team, to work with other people and befriend them, but it's hard when I feel so arbitrary.
Like they have nothing for you to do and you feel guilty for not doing anything because you're getting paid. Then you gravitate towards laziness and when you finally do get some non-task you know it's of zero value to anyone and your time would probably be better spent recycling old files on your desktop. So then you feel scared talking to anyone because you feel like you don't belong and are getting paid for not doing any work.
Either go full on Costanza, quit, or get used to feeling weak. ...I spent much of my time filling out job applications.