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I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

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Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#151

Post by rpwilcox »

matan_a wrote: post #32

Interesting post! I posted one not long ago saying the opposite. The reactions were staggering and felt the need to update my post to clarify my point. Regarding your post though, i think that no one is assuming extremes - you can easily manage a few hours a month to do some mad science experiments. You might even surprise yourself with the outcome or renew your passion that made you take up development in the first…

The software craftsmanship / hacker dojo people would argue your point that about needing to repeat over and over again.

Example: I probably need to sit down and actually practice, over and over again, certain Regex concepts, because I need them at hand immediately.... which is what habit does.

Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#152

Post by kenjackson »

raganwald wrote: post #122
kenjackson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right question is, What is it about certain/many good developers that leads them to program in their spare time? This is a good question, but it does lead me to a thought... why does it seem like most side projects are done by people for whom the predominance of their work appears to be side projects? Let me explain. Most of the programmers who produce large products, don't do much in the way of side projects. Ca…

why does it seem like most side projects are done by people for whom the predominance of their work appears to be side projects? It's easy to see why most side projects are done by people for whom the predominance of their work appears to be side projects: This is a trivial consequence of the fact that the vast majority of the software developed on this planet is "dark matter." It's developed inside companies, and ev…

If we don't include all of the side projects and we don't include all of the day gigs, it is very easy for our skewed sample to have many examples where the authors appear to do most of their work on their side projects.

Absolutely -- I think that's where I was trying to go, but not as eloquently. If you look at the thread, I define "side project" in, what I consider, an odd way. Basically something that is on GitHub, because that has become what so many mean by side project.

In a roundabout way I was trying to say that people learn and grow in ways that are less visible. And while others may question your programming skills as a result -- you shouldn't.

Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#153

Post by shadowfox »

spitfire wrote: post #49
rimantas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good accountants don't balance checkbooks in their spare > time, do they? How much did balancing checkbooks changed compared to that of 20 years ago? > lawyers don't hold mock trials IANAL, but I assume a big part of lawyers work is that would be considered "side project" in programming, namely going through different cases and looking for stuff that can be useful. > doctors don't do surgery on their friends as sid…

Not to nitpick, but lawyers are a special case. Lawyers don't do side projects because they can bill clients to do that research. Assuming they can find an excuse as to why it's relevant to the client.

> Lawyers don't do side projects because they can bill clients to do that research

This is actually true of software engineers as well. Sometimes you can convince management/clients. But you may have a hard job on your hands because people have come to believe that this sort of thing will be done on your own time.

Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#154

Post by rwmj »

reedF211 wrote: post #23

A good programmer should wake up at 6 am in the morning get a solid 2.5hrs of coding done by 8:30 am, at 8:30 leave for work, work till 6 (it goes without saying that the lunchbreak must be spent trying to learn the Haskell or if you are feeling lazy answering questions on stackoverflow). Commute from 6 to 6:30 (it's a bonus if you listen to a technical podcast during this time and no stuff like TWIT does not count,…

Ridiculous.

You should already know Haskell (and ML), and be writing your own research language.

Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#155

Post by chrisbennet »

georgieporgie wrote: post #142
DanI-S wrote: post #6

Unless you have a super-awesome job (and lots of people do), programming in your own time may be the only way to discover and play with new things. If you work backend at a C# shop but would like to start writing Ruby, you're unlikely to get the opportunity to learn unless you do it in side projects. Practically, you may be totally happy in your current niche, but you're at higher risk from technological obsolescence…

but you're at higher risk from technological obsolescence unless you diversify. For the same reason that a developer can produce something using a new technology on spare time, the same developer can pick up a new technology, at work, in a brief period of time. In other words, I think it's largely B.S. to talk about 'obsolete' developers. You could only be obsolete if you entirely forgot how to learn, which I think i…

Developers know that they can pick up a new technology on the job. Hiring managers are looking for someone who can hit the ground running.

Re: I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?

#156

Post by Vitaly »

Short answer - yes.

But it's more complicated.

You are not supposed to do programmng all day long, but ifbyou don't feel a need to expand beyond what you do at work its one of the following:

1) you work is so great and diversified that you simply get all the programming you could ever need. For most people it's not the case 2) you are already extremely great. I think Linus probably doesn't need to learn yet enother language/framework (although I wouldn't be surprised if he does sometimes). For most people it's also probably not the case 3) you just don't like it that much

For most people that don't program at home (3) is probably the reason.

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