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Any ideas of a particular project to try while disconnected?

technomancy 10y ago
I've been working on a game recently, (https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard) and I've been struck with how refreshingly simple and self-contained it can be compared to a web service. I can still count all my dependencies on one hand instead of pulling in a huge intertangled graph of them, and I nearly always find that when I run into problems, they are of my own making instead of being thrust upon me by 3rd parties. Granted I need reference documentation for the engine (love2d in my case), and I occasionally consult the Lua stdlib documentation (which I get from apt-get), but that's about it.
nostrademons 10y ago
I've found that the most effective projects to try disconnected are often the most difficult, in terms of fundamental CS needed. You don't want to do something like a mobile app or realtime Node.js SPA, where the majority of the work is in looking up API calls and debugging why a third-party framework isn't working. That is, unless you really know the technology well...I wrote much of the code for a startup a year or so ago on Caltrain, because it was Django and was like the 4th or 5th Django app I'd written, and didn't really stretch my comfort zone much (technically, at least; the social challenges were new and difficult). Instead, things like compilers, complex algorithms, data formats, data mining, etc. are good candidates for offline coding. Most of the knowledge for them exists in your head, and the ratio of thinking time vs. reading time is much greater. In the case of data mining & machine learning, there's also a long iterative process that involves looking at your data, coming up with insights, implementing your insights, and evaluating how well it improves the algorithm. If your test data fits on a laptop (not all interesting data does), it's a good candidate for offline development.

I've been working on a game recently, (https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard https://technomancy.itch.io/bussard) and I've been struck with how refreshingly simple and self-contained it can be compared to a web service. I can still count all my dependencies on one hand instead of pulling in a huge intertangled graph of them, and I nearly always find that when I run into problems, they are of my own making instead of being thrust upon me by 3rd parties. Granted I need reference documentation for the engine (love2d in my case), and I occasionally consult the Lua stdlib documentation (which I get from apt-get), but that's about it.

nostrademons 10y ago

I've found that the most effective projects to try disconnected are often the most difficult, in terms of fundamental CS needed. You don't want to do something like a mobile app or realtime Node.js SPA, where the majority of the work is in looking up API calls and debugging why a third-party framework isn't working. That is, unless you really know the technology well...I wrote much of the code for a startup a year or so ago on Caltrain, because it was Django and was like the 4th or 5th Django app I'd written, and didn't really stretch my comfort zone much (technically, at least; the social challenges were new and difficult). Instead, things like compilers, complex algorithms, data formats, data mining, etc. are good candidates for offline coding. Most of the knowledge for them exists in your head, and the ratio of thinking time vs. reading time is much greater. In the case of data mining & machine learning, there's also a long iterative process that involves looking at your data, coming up with insights, implementing your insights, and evaluating how well it improves the algorithm. If your test data fits on a laptop (not all interesting data does), it's a good candidate for offline development.