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

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jun 17, 2011, 7:32 AM UTC

noste wrote: post #69

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…

Linus has a few: tracker[1], pesconvert[2], and a fork of uemacs[3]. 1. http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/tracker.g... 2. http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/pesconver... 3. http://git.kernel.org/?p=editors/uemacs/uemacs.git;a=summary

Post by jim_h » Fri, Jun 17, 2011, 7:39 AM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #35

themal wrote: post #20

Most developers I know - in real life - don't program in their spare time, never mind going to conferences or evening meet ups. If you work as a developer and your hobby is developing then there's a good chance that you'll burn out. That's not to say that it is bad for people who do it, just try to expand your hobbies to something outside of technology.

If you work as a developer and your hobby is developing then there's a good chance that you'll burn out. People are allowed to have more than one hobby. And I'd think that if your paid job is writing and maintaining boring internal enterprise apps, hacking on fun projects could prevent you from getting burned out.

Post by maigret » Fri, Jun 17, 2011, 7:53 AM UTC

biot wrote: post #9

unshift wrote: post #5

when i'm working a 9-5 job, the last thing i want to do is go home and program more. i'd rather throw the ball around with the dog or rock out on my guitar. in my experience the people who say "you have to have side projects to be a good developer" are either people who do program in their spare time, or people who want to hire the type of programmers who voluntarily chain themselves to their desk. this is one myth i…

All those activities in other professions don't involve learning. Presumably, balancing a checkbook is a solved problem but an enthusiastic accountant may have brushed up on Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to learn how their craft would get impacted. Lawyers may not hold mock trials but they may read journals in their spare time which cover interesting precedent-setting cases. Doctors don't do surgery for fun but they may…

Post by johnx123 » Fri, Jun 17, 2011, 7:59 AM UTC

keeptrying wrote: post #48

BasDirks wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not sure. Could you elaborate?

Most of my friends are indians who are programmers - none of them code outside of work. And I mean none. I'm indian - I code outside of work as I'm trying to start a company. Indians look at programming as a great way to make good money. And a way to move up to management after that. Thats about it.

Post by stashdot » Fri, Jun 17, 2011, 8:24 AM UTC

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,…