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150 days of living and coding in a van

ruby-on-wheels.github.io

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Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#171

Post by phaemon »

dx034 wrote: post #119
classisch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I'm the author of that article. I respect your opinion and I totally agree that van life is not for everyone. However it's seems funny that I've never experienced one of your concerns: > I would totally hate the lack of space and comfort. I have 12 square meters and my bed is super comfortable. Most of the time I'm outside. Works perfect for me. > I'd sleep really poorly at night when it's super hot in summer an…

> In Europe the 4G network coverage is amazing. Within the last five months I had less issues with my connectivity than some of my co-workers using a cable internet. Do you get enough data volume? Most sim cards for use with computer are quite restricted. Or can you live off 10GB/month?

In the UK you can get 40G for £30 a month. I imagine you can do at least as well in most EU countries.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#172

Post by aidos »

coldtea wrote: post #103
mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

> I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? No. Some of us work even more focused on a single smaller screen even than having 10 BS windows asking for our attention (and I include debuggers in those, the ultimate hop-around time sink for some developers). Besides, people managed to write software for several decades before larger than 14" screens became the norm. Heck, until the late seven…

This seems to have attracted a lot of downvotes, I guess because it's overtly antagonistic.

But I too prefer to work on a smaller screen (and I have tried much larger monitors). I switch context and then just work in that context. I don't feel the need to be able to see a load of different things at the same time.

Really though, it's subjective and everyone should just do what works best for them. It's the same discussion that comes up with some people having 200 tabs open in their browser whereas others of us keep it really minimal.

I'm over a decade into working pretty much on a 13" macbook full time and that's my happy place.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#173

Post by pferde »

DamonHD wrote: post #124
petercooper wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm in full-on development mode, I like to have at least one separate screen, though for more casual maintenance stuff I'm happy on a laptop. I seem to recall DHH (Basecamp/Rails) said in the past he frequently developed on an 11" MacBook at some point, only using a monitor when sat at a desk, so I guess it's doable.

I do all my dev and other work on a 13" MacBook Air and have done for years. I haven't had a desktop monitor since my last gig with a client in the City. Yes, the ergonomics suck relatively speaking, especially now that my eyesight is getting worse with age (and from falling off a Segway!), but it means that I can work anywhere and my desk at home can be tiny.

I don't really get this rationale. You're basically saying that you know that you are hurting yourself, but on the plus side, you are able to be hurting yourself anywhere.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#175

Post by toomanybeersies »

hycaria wrote: post #25
phillc73 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, once they have kids, they have to settle and are back to square one. I don't necessarily think it's back to square one. One doesn't have to settle in a big city. I moved out of London when my first child was due. We moved to a mid-sized (250k population) European city. I was able to find work, in an unrelated field to my previous experience but still using similar technical and management skills. The remun…

Don't you worry about the objectively lower education for your children there ? As much as I dislike cities, I can't imagine raising children somewhere else. Education, culture and network potential (through friends) is just not the same.

250k doesn't seem to be small enough to have a serious negative quality of education.

I grew up in a city of 100k, and I had all the opportunities that someone growing up in a bigger city would have. The quality of teaching was fine too. I did go to a larger school, with 2300 pupils though.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#176

Post by m0nty »

maaaats wrote: post #109
coldtea wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? No. Some of us work even more focused on a single smaller screen even than having 10 BS windows asking for our attention (and I include debuggers in those, the ultimate hop-around time sink for some developers). Besides, people managed to write software for several decades before larger than 14" screens became the norm. Heck, until the late seven…

That's some serious gatekeeping.

AKA "an opinion".

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#177

Post by ido »

mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

I find it ok as long as the laptop display is high resolution (mine is 3200x1800) and at least 13-14" big. If I had to do it more permanently I'd have probably gotten a 15" laptop tho.

It also reminds me that when I got started the common display was a 14" CRT (i.e. viewable area more like 13") :)

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#178

Post by jlebrech »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #158
jlebrech wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to home school to be on budget, otherwise they come home from school wanting new things. which also means your partner cannot have a full time job or has to work remote too. you could start a remote business and make the hours longer allowing for kid related interruptions.

otherwise they come home from school wanting new things Indulging them is probably the worst thing you can do, just say no.

i guess being told 'no' is part of the learning experience.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#179

Post by coldtea »

dx034 wrote: post #117
coldtea wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is he going to feel after another 150 days? Camping in winter can be fun, but it's not warm. At all. Depends on the country. There are places where winter is like 30 degrees. And you can always have a portable heater -- in a small van it will heat it up completely.

Driving from Berlin? Most of southern Europe can be very cold (even Portugal and Spain) in winter. Maybe some parts of Turkey will stay warmer but not sure about that. Or maybe southern Greece. And the problem is that weather is not independent. If it's very cold in Portugal for a few weeks it's usually also cold in much of the rest of Southern Europe.

It's trivial to get with the van to Morocco, Turkey. And with a rather inexpensive ferry ride, you can go anywhere in Africa / Middle East.

In places like Malaga, Crete, Cyprus, etc it's the average low temperature is like 10-13 degrees (52-55 f). Hardly very cold if you've ever experienced NY, Chicago, Canada, Norther Europe levels of cold. And of course it's very easy to heat a small van.

Re: 150 days of living and coding in a van

#180

Post by john61 »

mmahemoff wrote: post #94

I'm curious - don't people miss big monitors when coding on a laptop? I've done a fair amount of coding on laptops while travelling and it's okay, but I feel like a big monitor is optimal for most work and wouldn't want a permanent situation with just laptop. I like to have logs, command line, and editor all visible, and ideally a browser too. The editor alone is much more useful in a big window where you can see a f…

In Emacs switching between all needed buffers and tiling them around is very fast, once you learned the keystrokes. Emacs can display almost every information in its buffers. No big screen needed to have all the information immediately available. Emacs was designed on and for small screens.
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