On one hand: duh. On the other: if you also code at work as a step on a ladder you'd like to climb, coding more than just at work is a common method of getting ahead of people who don't. Then again, that doesn't require not having a life, so the ultimate position I'd take would be: find a balance but make sure that it doesn't turn in to complacency.
It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
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Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#92Semi related to this, if you do code after work (because you enjoy it), it's OK to code without it being a "startup". I often get bogged down with "how do I monetize, market, and maintain this", which just kills my motivation. Just because something isn't marketed and monetized doesn't make it invalid; outside of work coding has brought me numerous benefits: - Learning new things. Not because I feel like if I don't I…
I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines, writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe finding one of those groups will change your mind…
I'm curious about the proportion of people who started visiting HN because of ycombinator vs those who came just because someone told them it had good discussions.
I'm of the latter group.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#93I work in Front-End and have always had side-projects with coding involved (Games, Websites, CLI-Tools). Some of my career's and company's circumstances (no senior front-end-devs for reviewing and mentoring around, mostly work on classic websites/web-shops) make it necessary. It's the only way to keep my skills somewhat up-to-date and to improve beyond what I do at work. Coding and building is fun to me, so I was ok…
Well, same here on the kids. I wrote /bin/ps for Linux and maintained the procps package for about a decade. I also did significant work on Tux Paint and a little Linux kernel work. I managed just fine with 3 tiny kids and a job, and later with 5 small kids and no job. Adding back a job, I hit my limit. This is one way that Open Source projects die.
Since then, the situation has only gotten more extreme. My family size goes to 11, and yes that is one louder than 10. Soon I'll have a dozen, all homeschooled.
I got one kid interested in following in my footsteps, so sometimes I get to have fun teaching him. Mostly, there just isn't time for anything extra. One factor that helps is that I'm in a different part of the industry. You're in "Front-End", which might mean you need to learn a new javascript framework every year. I mostly write in C, for which the last update was 8 years ago and the last significant update was 20 years ago. When I'm not doing C, I'm doing a wide variety of different kinds of assembly language. That changes, but one is expected to constantly refer to the manual. So really I've gone a quarter century with no significant change. I am pondering the value of learning rust, but I certainly don't have to scramble each year to learn the hot new thing.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accidental fasting is not a good thing. I know this from personal experience.
What happened out of curiosity? Asking as someone who’s been doing this for ~20 years.
You can get tired, cranky and angry easily and fast. It’s much worse if your sleep has been bad recently. You can make really poor decisions and offend people or do stupid things you’ll regret because of non-existent willpower. You can also faint which is dangerous even if you fall down relatively safely, never mind if you crack your head open or if you’re in the middle of doing something even moderately dangerous.
Start fasting by skipping breakfast and work your way up to skipping lunch and then doing a full day fast if you’re going to do it and always stay hydrated. If you’re doing a long fast make sure you’re getting salt too, even if it’s not hot enough that you’re sweating much. Take it easy and go slowly like with starting a new exercise regimen.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#95I became a coder because I find it useful, valuable, and creatively stimulating.
The only time I really enjoy coding, in the sense that 12 hours can pass by in the blink of an eye, is when I'm working on my own things. So by the time I'm done working for ~8 hours a day I'm bursting with excitement for when I get to fire up my development VM and code for another 6 hours.
I get excited learning new things about my field. I get excited encountering and solving new problems. I get excited when I am able to form connections between isolated domains of knowledge and create work that is more valuable than the time I spent on it.
Programming is engineering, but it is also art. I am an engineer, but I am also an artist. I live to create; writing useful applications, making video games and writing music are all ways I do this. My career path has and will continue to be a reflection of these values.
I understand if some people chose to become programmers just for the money. I hope you are at least treating my field with respect and not just getting by with minimal effort while eroding employer/employee trust and dragging down the median salary.
But consider that you could be making money in a field you are truly passionate about, blurring the lines between what is "work" and what is a "personal project". This is what it means to become successful in life, not wads of cash.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines, writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe finding one of those groups will change your mind…
FWIW, I make money hacking on Arduino :-)
What do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it a lot more nuanced than that. People that go home to work on github repos that are essentially just copy-pasting from HackerRank are not doing themselves any favors. I mean, sure, their repo looks better to HR drones. If that is what they are worries about, no problem. But if they are really trying to get better, then they have to do 'deliberate' practice. Just grinding through things isn't the end-all-be-…
> But if they are really trying to get better, then they have to do 'deliberate' practice. Just grinding through things isn't the end-all-be-all. You have to really be trying. Not only that, but the types of coding you can do at home are often much different than your work. Most hobby projects won't give you a chance to process terabytes of data or serve data to hundreds of millions of clients or send bytes across th…
> Not only that, but the types of coding you can do at home are often much different than your work. Most hobby projects won't give you a chance to process terabytes of data or serve data to hundreds of millions of clients or send bytes across the country with microwaves. So if your job is related to any of those things, you're not going to improve much at home.
Then again, most jobs won't give you that chance either.
It can be that coding hobby projects can be your only chance to learn how to write good, readable, maintainable and performant code. If your job involves churning out features for customers or closing tickets, you will not have time for anything other than "your best under time pressure". Hobby projects can give you opportunity to improve the quality of code you produce by default.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's only the HN crowd that tries to look at side-projects from the monetization angle. (How else do you explain the frequent 'what's your side-business' posts? Also, this is a VC's site after all.) There are many computing cultures - people making games for gamejams, working on quines, writing code for GameBoys, contributing to Firefox, Arduino hackers. Maybe finding one of those groups will change your mind…
I'm curious about the proportion of people who started visiting HN because of ycombinator vs those who came just because someone told them it had good discussions. I'm of the latter group.
I came through pg's essays on Lisp (and not startups!), stayed for the discussions.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's what the context is here. I disagree. > There's a notion in the software development profession that you should have a side project which you put near full-time hours and / or effort into. There's a common notion that you should be doing practical learning, including side projects, outside of “normal” paid work. It is far less common, however, to encounter the idea that it should be near full-time hours (and…
My wife is an excellent lawyer. She spends "NOWHERE" the same amount of time as I do to stay in touch with whats happening in the field. She has to read new laws once in a while (sometimes even once per year). To be relevant I as a Software Developer have to read about new stuff DAILY, while writing to my own blog, do side projects from time to time and learn other stuff i need for my current work. I would not be lyi…
> To be relevant I as a Software Developer have to read about new stuff DAILY, while writing to my own blog, do side projects from time to time and learn other stuff i need for my current work.
No, you don't. To be relevant, you just have to know a little JavaScript. You can find a good-paying job with that.
What you described is something that's correlated with personal love in the craft, and which can help you get better at it (then again, it also makes you more frustrated about professional life). You can fake it, of course, if for some reason you feel you need to,.
Re: It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too
#100Does a lawyer do law outside of billable hours? Some do pro-bono. But not the majority. Does a doctor practice medicine outside of his hours? Again, some work at free clinics, but generally no. Do veterinarians like it when you ask them to take a look at your cat when they're not in clinic? No. Almost always no. Work is work, leisure is leisure. If coding is leisure for you, that's great.
People brought up continuing education requirement, but since you keep asking about doing the stuff they do for work, outside work: lawyers and doctors generally don't, unless they're volunteering or giving out free advice (risky). But that's not necessarily because they don't want to, it's because those are service skills of limited utility outside regular work context.
Consider instead a car mechanic, or a carpenter. It wouldn't be surprising to find a mechanic doing some old car restoration work after hours, or a carpenter making their own trinkets or furniture. Unlike the skills of doctors and lawyers, those skills can be easily applied in personal life.
Software development is a funny trade, with continuing education requirements of medicine and law (though self-imposed, not regulated), but with work type more similar to carpentry or car repair. That is, unless you're working with some very unique hardware or very unique datasets, you can do the same type of work at home that you do at work (and quite likely of better quality, as you're likely to have better working conditions at home).