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The dispassionate developer

blog.ploeh.dk

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Re: The dispassionate developer

#241

Post by PeterWhittaker »

capitalistLove wrote: post #229
PeterWhittaker wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to take issue with the notion that doing a thing out of passion will not burn you out: it is possible to overdo a thing - out of passion - to the extent it does burn you out. Speaking from personal experience.... Recovery is easier/faster than in the non-passion case, but it still happens. As to being dispassionate, when I take such an approach, even to the passionate thing, I have greater endurance and tolera…

I think we're using the word passion differently. I have certainly gone through periods of time when I have completley lost interest in programming - for a variety or reasons, possibly involving working too much. But, I'd say that in these circumstances I have lost my passion for programming (and was fortunate to get it back later). My point is more that there really are people who contribute to OSS and whatnot for n…

Well said! There is rereading in my near future....

Re: The dispassionate developer

#242

Post by astura »

austincheney wrote: post #46
Uberphallus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! When I was single I had a lot of free time to tinker and go through coding tests, etc, etc, and cater to whatever hiring shenanigans were in place. First marriage, then a kid, and I find myself grabbing my laptop after work maybe once a fortnight. I'm always "open for new challenges" and I regularly apply to positions in interesting (to me) projects, but more often than not, at some point in their process…

So I am married with kids and I have two separate careers in unrelated industries to balance, only one of which is full time though. Still I find time to spend with the wife and kids and I still contribute daily to open source. It is all about budgeting and balance. What are you willing to sacrifice. I don't have social time outside the family and I don't watch much television unless I am traveling away from the fami…

Does your wife do all the cooking, housework and childrearing?

Re: The dispassionate developer

#243

Post by watwut »

pydry wrote: post #240
watwut wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You generally become better with more practice though, right? Whole 10,000 hours thing? Except that 10000 hours thing is non scientific nonsense. To improve, you have to practice right way. If you code for 8 hours at work, coding 2 further hours wont make you improve more. Similarly, if you want to improve in music or running, just playing songs or jogging means you will hit plateau pretty fast. After that, you hav…

>If you code for 8 hours at work, coding 2 further hours wont make you improve more. A) I'm pretty sure almost nobody actually codes 8 hours at work. B) Those two hours will be of a very different nature to "work coding" and this can lead you to learn things you wouldn't pick up at work.

> I'm pretty sure almost nobody actually codes 8 hours at work.

The non-coding parts of work are necessary on oss projects too. In any case, programmers work being mostly coding + code review is pretty normal.

> Those two hours will be of a very different nature to "work coding" and this can lead you to learn things you wouldn't pick up at work.

That is nowhere near guaranteed and more likely to not be true. In particular, if you focus on maintaining the same software, it will be more of the same after a while.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#244

Post by watwut »

lostcolony wrote: post #205
watwut wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find 4 hours a lot. It is basically wholw afternoon.

Ever been to an onsite interview? It'll take you the same amount of time. Or longer. While being far higher pressure. And probably involve writing code on a whiteboard instead of an IDE.

I was not on over half day long interview that would primary involve whiteboard coding.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#245

Post by astura »

lostcolony wrote: post #205
watwut wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find 4 hours a lot. It is basically wholw afternoon.

Ever been to an onsite interview? It'll take you the same amount of time. Or longer. While being far higher pressure. And probably involve writing code on a whiteboard instead of an IDE.

Does a take home eliminate the onsite interview? Or is it just additional time?

Re: The dispassionate developer

#246

Post by DreamScatter »

neilparikh wrote: post #233
agloeregrets wrote: post #4

I'm betting on this article being controversial here somewhat. The point on OSS is hilariously true though. Like, everyone does realize that the tech giants just found a way to make the community work for them and to make money off the backs of it right? OSS is great for almost everyone, don't get me wrong, but in whole, the largest tech companies in the world have gotten an entire community to test, fix, and develop…

I'm skeptical that OSS actually provides that much free work for big companies. If you look at React for example, 25 out of the top 30 contributors are FB employees. The other 5 might have been as well, I just couldn't tell. If, for some reason, no one outside FB contributed to React, I doubt it would affect FB at all. The few commits that come externally would just be written in house. I think looking at other corpo…

You picked a bag example, look for a project that isn't owned by a big company but still used by them, like OpenSSL

Re: The dispassionate developer

#247

Post by pydry »

watwut wrote: post #243
pydry wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you code for 8 hours at work, coding 2 further hours wont make you improve more. A) I'm pretty sure almost nobody actually codes 8 hours at work. B) Those two hours will be of a very different nature to "work coding" and this can lead you to learn things you wouldn't pick up at work.

> I'm pretty sure almost nobody actually codes 8 hours at work. The non-coding parts of work are necessary on oss projects too. In any case, programmers work being mostly coding + code review is pretty normal. > Those two hours will be of a very different nature to "work coding" and this can lead you to learn things you wouldn't pick up at work. That is nowhere near guaranteed and more likely to not be true. In parti…

>The non-coding parts of work are necessary on oss projects too.

IME a far greater % is coding. There's also a lot of OSS people involved who don't code who help out with the other stuff.

Moreover, a lot of the stuff that "isn't coding" is a strong quality signal - how the developer interacts with bug reports for instance.

>That is nowhere near guaranteed and more likely to not be true. In particular, if you focus on maintaining the same software.

It'll still be different to what you do at your day job and will necessitate picking up a different set of skills and a different perspective.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#248

Post by [deleted] »

austincheney wrote: post #181
bcrosby95 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt I would be able to juggle 2 jobs with my current pandemic induced schedule. Basically, my time is spoken for during the week from 630am until 8pm. And that gets me 6 hours of work. I need to find 10 hours outside that time to get myself up to a 40 hour workweek. I'm pretty lucky in that my wife is a stay at home mom. My sister in law has a dual income family. They basically never see eachother, because one ha…

During the pandemic many developers are working from home, so scratch off transportation. Most developers in the corporate world work 40-45 hours per including lunch, breaks, and distractions. So normally that could be something like 9am to 5:30pm. If you have flexible office hours you can push that to 7am-3:30pm. If you are into open source you can spend 2 hours per night. Where you put that two hours is up to you,…

[deleted]

Re: The dispassionate developer

#249

Post by watwut »

pydry wrote: post #247
watwut wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure almost nobody actually codes 8 hours at work. The non-coding parts of work are necessary on oss projects too. In any case, programmers work being mostly coding + code review is pretty normal. > Those two hours will be of a very different nature to "work coding" and this can lead you to learn things you wouldn't pick up at work. That is nowhere near guaranteed and more likely to not be true. In parti…

>The non-coding parts of work are necessary on oss projects too. IME a far greater % is coding. There's also a lot of OSS people involved who don't code who help out with the other stuff. Moreover, a lot of the stuff that "isn't coding" is a strong quality signal - how the developer interacts with bug reports for instance. >That is nowhere near guaranteed and more likely to not be true. In particular, if you focus on…

> IME a far greater % is coding. There's also a lot of OSS people involved who don't code who help out with the other stuff.

It was not my experience. In work, the proportion of coding was bigger then when I maintained open source one. Mostly because company paid people to do other stuff. In OSS, afaik, it is was more of rare to have dedicated tester or to get already analyzed input. Also, the planning, organization, documentation, keeping tickets clean, decision making and so on are all on you. The ratio of project work is the same.

> It'll still be different to what you do at your day job and will necessitate picking up a different set of skills and a different perspective.

Maybe yes, maybe not. And after a while of maintaining the same software, you already maxed out what you learned. Moreover, you can learn new stuff without having side project. It has advantages, because then you dont have to finish and polish stuff. You just learn or try what interests you.

Lastly, side project is really not that dissimilar then working on the job - meaning job+side amounts to 10 hours a day work basically. It means your hourly effectivity will go down exactly like all studies on crunch predicts. You will get tired and slow.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#250

Post by hibbelig »

indigochill wrote: post #168
deergomoo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're having a bit of a debate about this internally as the company I work for is struggling to hire good candidates. For a while we've had a take-home test and that has increased our success rate somewhat. But as you say, we really don't want to lay unreasonable expectations on people who may have other obligations, but we've had many people in the past who've interviewed very well but turned out to be completely in…

Our take-home obviously isn't a trade secret, so we have three trivial problems in ours: 1. Write code that takes in a rectangle, coordinate, and distance, and tells if that coordinate is within the distance of the rectangle. 2. Determine whether a string has permutations which are palindromes. (I'm of the opinion this one is too simple, but it's been fascinating seeing what mental gymnastics some developers will go…

> 1. Write code that takes in a rectangle, coordinate, and distance, and tells if that coordinate is within the distance of the rectangle.

Distance from the center of the rectangle? Easy. From the closest corner? Easy. From the closest point on the rectangle? I'm not clear how to do this.

And will the sides of the rectangle be parallel to the x and y axes?

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