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Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

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Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#41

Post by iyulaev »

lmartel wrote: post #40
iyulaev wrote: post #37

Are you a bad artist if you don't paint on your own time? Are you a bad writer if you don't write on your own time? Are you a bad carpenter if you don't craft on your own time? No. You can be an excellent, professional .+\. But it's very rare to see someone at the top of their field who isn't passionate about their vocation. I haven't heard of many rockstars who started playing music for the money.

Well the thing about art, music, and writing is that, at least until you make it big (which most people never do) you're doing it only on your own time, since no one's paying you. Software's in this weird spot where it has some qualities of art (creative, inspires "passion", we expect people to do it without getting paid) and some qualities of a craft (it pays)

School doesn't pay for itself (quite the opposite, really). Learning on your own time certainly doesn't pay for itself. You're right in that a larger proportion of programmers "make it big" but I don't believe there's a fundamental difference.

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#42

Post by codezero »

jt2190 wrote: post #11

From the Quora answer [1]: > I do attend (and give) technical talks; and perhaps most > importantly, I pick my day job based on learning and > growth opportunities: which company I’m working at, which > team I’m on, and which projects I take on. I stumbled > onto this a little bit by accident, but I discovered that > responsibilities in your day job that require you to > learn are a great forcing function for learnin…

If you add ?share=1 to the end of the Quora URL, folks daring enough to follow the link won't get any sign-up call to action.

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#43

Post by jamieomatthews »

ABH. Always. Be. Hacking.

I think there are plenty of jobs that wont weigh side projects too heavily, as long as what you are working on for your job is awesome. I also think there are companies who like the modo I suggested at the top, and are looking for someone who loves to hack away at projects

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#46

Post by jmspring »

You should do something you enjoy in your spare time, if that is a side project, so be it. Some people do maker type things, others spend time with their families, for myself it is biking and gardening.

When I have had to interview people, there is the technical abilities that are pretty easy to get through. What I prefer, when trying to find out something about the person, is to have them talk about a passion or something they enjoy. For some, that is coding, for others something else.

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#47

Post by shubb »

People should spend their time doing things they like. I don't think people should feel bad, or like they lack balance because they enjoy programming side projects. People should do them because they enjoy them. (Like exercise, people who don't, usually only mean to do them. And that's fine).

They are important in a careers way though. Not so much because 'you need code samples' - there is a skills shortage you know. It's more that at large companies, you learn to be a Facebook Programmer, rather than a programmer. Goldman Sacs apparently have their own private programming language.

Side projects let you do things that are not your job. That is why they are fun (rather than more of the same). Some places, programmers never get to decide what they build (they get a list of features). Some programmers are 'test engineers', or maintenance engineers, and never write greenfield code. A lone inhouse programmer in a non IT company might enjoy working on opensource stuff and actually talking to someone about what they write.

And you do need that. I've work with plenty of C++ people who have never touched a dynamically typed language. One day they will need to - the world always moves on faster than your team.

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#48

Post by bdcravens »

zecho wrote: post #29
3pt14159 wrote: post #3

You will make more money if you have an active github account. For most people this means side projects/work. You will be a better developer if you code more. You will be exposed to more languages, tools, people, and ideas. If you don't code in your spare time, but you are happy where you are, don't feel like you are a bad developer, you just will not be as good at development as you could be. It is your life, why do…

I hear this quite often about Github and it's a bit disturbing to me. If I heard an editor judge an author's work based on what that author posts to twitter, I'd be horrified. I can't be the only person on Github that uses it primarily as a junk drawer full of bad implementations and abandoned "projects" that were more quick and dirty personal itches. Sometimes I'll contribute to random OSS, but the vast majority of…

I don't think you're necessarily judged by the quality of your Github code as much as the fact that you have Github code. Especially if it's a bit out of your normal box.

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#49

Post by trustfundbaby »

I think it does the profession a great disservice to present these things as mutually exclusive ie "If I don't do side projects, I am a bad developer". For me I like to think of things in a different light.

What I find with side project developers is a certain self-directedness that bodes well for the kind of employees that can thrive in a pure startup environment. The kind of thinking it takes to go ...

"I have this problem, Heck, I'm going to hack something together that does what I need"

or

"this open source tool I use is missing this one feature, I'll just code it and send in a pull request"

Then actually take time out of your life to code it up and put it out for use and, even better still, maintain it over a period of time.

That tells me that such a person will have no trouble figuring out what they need to do if they go to work for a startup that they're passionate about. It tells me that they'll usually be the kind of people to drive initiatives at bigger firms if they don't lose patience with the politicking, red tape and glacial pace of things.

Now, this DOES NOT mean that developers who don't do side projects won't possess these traits as well. Its just that the signal is clearer with the side project types. In the end you still have to go ahead and find out if they're actually good engineers before you hire them

Re: Are You A Bad Developer If You Don't Take On Side Projects?

#50

Post by nukerhazz »

zecho wrote: post #29
3pt14159 wrote: post #3

You will make more money if you have an active github account. For most people this means side projects/work. You will be a better developer if you code more. You will be exposed to more languages, tools, people, and ideas. If you don't code in your spare time, but you are happy where you are, don't feel like you are a bad developer, you just will not be as good at development as you could be. It is your life, why do…

I hear this quite often about Github and it's a bit disturbing to me. If I heard an editor judge an author's work based on what that author posts to twitter, I'd be horrified. I can't be the only person on Github that uses it primarily as a junk drawer full of bad implementations and abandoned "projects" that were more quick and dirty personal itches. Sometimes I'll contribute to random OSS, but the vast majority of…

This is why I use Bitbucket, with its unlimited private repos, for that junk drawer. I can keep my throwaways and false starts private.
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