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There is often pressure inside Software development for Software developers to code outside of work hours. Coding is considered a passion for some, but others don’t think this way. They are more than happy to not code in their spare time. This is OK.
Meetup groups, side-projects, coding quizzes, side-hustles, developing websites for friends and family. Improving your coding skills takes time, effort, discipline and sacrifice. But is it really necessary? That is for you to decide.
There is no doubt that there is importance to setting goals. It helps to see where you are going and to have something you are working towards. Being the best coder isn’t everyone’s goal.
People often feel peer pressure to code outside of hours, to stay competitive and to be the best. If someone is making you feel this way, you can remind yourself that it is perfectly OK to only code at work. Some people might even argue that doing too much can have diminishing returns…
[...] In short, it is perfectly OK to have a life outside of work. Many people hack their schedules according to their own goals and interests, which may or may not include coding. If you think this post could help someone out there, please share it around!
(Score: 2) by black6host on Sunday May 05 2019, @12:44AM (14 children)
Well, I'd have to disagree:
If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. -- Marc Anthony
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday May 05 2019, @01:00AM (5 children)
Well, if you're a a top-ranking musician during the day and Cleopatra's lover at night, life tends to be more exciting than that of a code monkey paid to debug a Javascript expense sheet checker written without comment by someone else in a nondescript company in Bangor, Maine, overdue and under budget, to eek out enough to pay for the house and the car and send the kids to college...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @01:12AM (4 children)
Sorry about that. Are you debugging the one I wrote in all caps or the one without vowels in the variable names (it's like only playing the white keys on a piano).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday May 05 2019, @07:19AM (2 children)
The one where every variable/block/function is an acronym, and there isn't a single comment anywhere.
Oh ... Sorry. You were exaggerating, and I ruin it with actual i-work-with-this-guy trauma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @09:24AM (1 child)
An acronym of Hindi terms using Sanskrit code-points?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday May 05 2019, @08:58PM
Purebred white American who graduated long before memory and storage got cheap.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 05 2019, @01:16PM
You mean, like C major and A minor?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday May 05 2019, @01:26AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 05 2019, @03:13AM (2 children)
I'd have to disagree with your disagreement.
Because I've been there. I've had multiple types of careers in my life already "doing what I love," and jobs ultimately have many ways of sucking fun out of it.
Either you are responsible to an employer who will ultimately make demands of you -- even in the process of doing kinds of things you love to do -- that make it feel much more like "work" or you're some sort of independent contractor or consultant or artist who usually has to pay attention to what customers want to make a living.
So, if you do what you love AND are independently wealthy enough to ignore demands from all others about your work, you never have to work a day in your life. Or, if you are one of the lucky few who "hits it big" doing a personal project while young or something, you can "retire" to just do what you love on your own schedule.
For the rest of the world, doing what you love to cater to others' specifications is often still very much like "work" at least part of the time.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday May 05 2019, @04:40AM (1 child)
The situation that invariably gets my goat is when I am required to do substandard work to satisfy some arbitrary requirement.
For instance, there is no way I can seriously consider a popular software vendors products suitable for use in some factory automation applications. I trust even Arduinos far more. I don't sleep well knowing at all times, an update may break things and leave me with everyone on my ass. But yet, that is what the handshakers want... A brand name latent problem. I could probably be earning good money turning out "business grade" crap, handshake quality, but I do have a pride of "doing it right".
Reminds me of the phrase about there being some things even a pig won't do.
I really hate to do something the wrong way, on purpose, just to get paid. I feel like a damm prostitute. Not an artist paid for skill and creativity. I feel like a chef required to serve poorly prepared meals... With my name on it, no less.
I know my girlfriend got really tired of hearing my diatribes about mixing code and data thirty years ago...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @11:57AM
I feel the same way, but after a while, you must come to the realization that IT'S JUST A JOB.
The one who pays the piper calls the tune.
It's not "art." Slapping something together as quickly as possible and getting it out the door is the way it is done, and there's little you can do to change that because that's capitalism for you.
I dare say that if everyone knew what programming is really like as a career, a lot of people would choose something else as a young person.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 05 2019, @04:23AM (2 children)
A totally misattributed citation [quoteinvestigator.com].
Many tried to find it in Confucius, or Arthur Szathmary, or Harvey Mackay, or Janet Lambert-Moore, or many others.
I'm sorry to say, but clearly such words of wisdom... 100% sure it was The William Shatner who said them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @08:33AM
I think you're right, as there's no other explanation for this:
https://youtu.be/lul-Y8vSr0I?t=38 [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday May 05 2019, @04:43PM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
I miss MDC. RIP.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Sunday May 05 2019, @04:36AM
Too much of a good thing is still too much.
How does the system kill artists? with debt (see courtney love's letter about piracy) and live tours with a tight schedule. An artist which cranked up a perfectly fine album out of demos gets to a shit second album after a year of touring. And has likely become dependent on some drugs.
Coding is fun if the problem is fun, else it's OK. Still better than unclogging toilets, unless you are dealing with systemd or windows, in that case I fail to see any difference.
Anyway, sometimes you'd pull all nighters, then after the stuff is finished the proper employer should send you home for a vacation.
That does not happen because the rest of the world has inherited the USA double problem: employers love money more than their enterprise, employees love money more than their workplace. The second part of the problem is probably caused by the first but it has become an independent issue.
Workers will try to do nothing on company time because they are treated like HUMAN RESOURCES (an expression who is better suited for auschwitz), the company will squeeze every drop of blood from the workers and then boot them out because they are HUMAN RESOURCES and prone to cheat anyway.
The way out? well I cannot legally suggest to kill whoever calls you human resources and torture and kill those who taught them and profit off them, so I am a bit stumped.
Account abandoned.