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>I have met many programmers that don’t like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers. Whatever little credibi

>I have met many programmers that don’t like to code in their spare time, and that has reliably revealed them to be sub-par developers. Whatever little credibility you had up to this point you've just lost.

Benjammer 10y ago
This opinion needs to fucking die in a fire already.
- lbn 10y ago
  Is it really surprising that programmers that practise additional 10 to 15 hours a week improving their skills outside the scope of whatever project or tech stack they are limited to at work were better in this person's experience? It would be pretty incredible if spending a lot of free time on challenging personal projects made someone a worse developer or had no impact at all.
  - Benjammer 10y ago
    Not denying your points. It's not the only way to be a good developer though, that's the idea I hate. It's about teaching yourself to be a good learner, which can be accomplished through a variety of hobbies that don't even need to be tech related. If programming at home is your jam, then more power to you. Saying that any developer who doesn't code on the side is, categorically, "sub-par" is ludicrous though.
mschuster91 10y ago
Not exactly, because someone who explores other technologies unrelated to his/her "work" field will inevitably pick up experience and knowledge - which the employer can grab for free without sending the employee to expensive courses or having to hire highly specialized freelancers. I have done a lot of weird things as "hobby" projects with even weirder technologies, including interfacing with smartcards in PHP (don't ask), working with cheap-ass Chinese thermoprinters, electronic chips, devkits, FPGAs, operating a mixed OpenLDAP/AD stack,... and I very often have profited at my job from the knowledge I gained while developing. Oh, and someone who never heard of Apache rewrite rules please shouldn't call himself a full-stack developer. Ops (and being able to formulate ops requirements to a hoster!) are a part of the stack, too, not just deploying some nodejs stuff to a container in the cloud.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  You're not wrong. But some people don't like to stare at a computer and program for 8 hours a day and then go home and keep doing it. They may have other responsibilities or other hobbies, or just a highly active social life. There was a time when I was younger where I spent a lot of time outside of work programming, but I also didn't have any other hobbies (well, playing video games doesn't really count), no responsibilities, and almost no social life. Now that I'm older and have all three, programming at home is a luxury I often choose not to do. But that doesn't make me a bad programmer.
  - huehehue 10y ago
    One could just as easily argue that you're not a "bad programmer" specifically because you used to spend so much of your free time programming.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  But the point is that it totally depends on the person and it's not this hard and fast rule. It's also vague to the point of meaninglessness considering all the various kinds of technologies and depths within those technologies one might be toying with in their spare time. I would argue that the general intuition that many programmers have about people who code in their spare time is simply a too-narrow view of the picture. It's more about people who are really good at LEARNING, and people who code in their spare time tend to become very good at self-teaching new things and figuring out how different systems work and interact. A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing learning something in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in professional productivity.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    > A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing learning something in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in professional productivity. This is an excellent point. I have lots of side projects outside of work. At the moment, none of them involve code but they all involve learning things; some of them are even fairly technical.
current_call 10y ago
The ability to automate is powerful. Anyone who doesn't find a use for it in their private life isn't just a mediocre developer; they're a mediocre human.
- tedks 10y ago
  I wouldn't go so far as to call people who don't see the universal relevance of computation "mediocre humans," but they're certainly missing out on a lot. Computers generalize cognition and memory at scales far beyond what humans are capable of. It's ludicrous to only ever write code to shuffle around cyberwidgets.
  - current_call 10y ago
    I'm blunt because I feel strongly about it. They could be so much greater, but they willingly choose not to be. Then they lie to themselves about being just as good as anyone else despite being denied jobs.
- current_call 10y ago
  Sarah has a job as a web developer. She doesn't like programming very much, and avoids it at home. Her real passion is acting, so she joined a local theater troupe that performs plays at the community center. Every year they do a little Rocky Horror Picture Show event at the local theater. Frank is a programmer at a big bank. He does most of his work in COBOL. The work is tedious and the hours are long, but Frank doesn't mind. Work is supposed to be hard. Besides, he makes plenty of money, enough money to help his only son meet his tuition. Frank never really knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just sort of ended up where he is, but his wife and son are happy, and that makes Frank happy. Both of these people are mediocre developers and mediocre humans. They waste forty hours of every weekday developing skills that they won't use at home and only want so they can continue working at jobs they don't like. Turns out most people are mediocre. Those two aren't upset with what I posted, because they don't care, because they don't visit Hacker News, because they have lives. Lets talk about Jeff. Jeff is a sixteen year old atheist who loves science. He gets high grades in all his math and science classes. He can even handle English pretty well. He just does the readings in class! He loves talking about how great science is. When he's not talking about science or playing league of legends he's browsing the internet looking at things like the "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook page or r/atheism. Jeff is a happy intelligent scientific young man. He also doesn't do any science. Turns out looking at inspiring quotes on a space background isn't science.[0] Jeff's a pretty useless kid, but he's sixteen, so we'll give him a break. Mark is a student finishing his undergraduate degree in Computer Science, or maybe he's a man who's worked five years doing front-end development; doesn't matter. Mark is a programmer. He visits Hacker News to get the latest news, spends at least a couple hours a week on Reddit, keeps a small blog on Medium, hangs out with plenty of friends on the weekend, and enjoys a good beer. He doesn't use any of the stuff he's learned at school or work for his personal life. He doesn't host his resume on a personal website. He doesn't use regular expressions at home. He doesn't build a program to split games up into binary chunks so his kids can move games between computers without having to waste one of his expensive CDs.[1] He doesn't write any kind of automated backup scripts. He doesn't use anything like LaTex or org-mode for writing professional documents. He doesn't do anything like programming or related to programming in his spare time because it's boring and hard. Mark doesn't like it, but Mark doesn't care. He's making good money and there wasn't anything else he really wanted to do, but unlike old man Frank, Mark doesn't have an identity. Frank's family is what guides him. Frank thinks of himself as a family man and a provider. Mark thinks of himself as a programmer. Mark spends all his time on Hacker News, Reddit, and Medium reading and writing about software, but never ever coding for fun. When I talk about mediocre humans, I'm talking about the Marks of the world. If you're wasting your time reading my spiteful comments and naive Medium blog posts, then you identify as a software guy, and if you're a software guy you should be honing your craft instead of whining about unfair expectations from employers. Don't think for a second you're just as good as everyone else. You're not. [0] http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd [1] This is an example program from the book Programming Python
snhorne 10y ago
I quit reading here. This idea that programmers have to work 18-hour days just to avoid becoming substandard is idiotic. ps. if you have to spend all your free time studying to avoid losing your job, you never actually had any free time to begin with.
- current_call 10y ago
  This idea that programmers have to work 18-hour days just to avoid becoming substandard is idiotic. Is it stupid because it isn't true or is it stupid because you don't want it to be true?
  - ScaryRacoon 10y ago
    It isn't true. If you use your time wisely then you will be just fine. If your employer doesn't give you the time/budget for on-going education, then you need to look for a new employer.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    it's stupid because it isn't true. the best and most productive programmers i know have lots of other hobbies and interests, both cerebral and physical. they are intellectually gifted people. if you need to try that hard, maybe you're just not that smart. i learned that early, because i'm not that smart, and working 18 hours a day sure as hell didn't fix that.
    - current_call 10y ago
      >if you need to try that hard Do people who program in their spare time usually work 18 hour days?
- khedoros 10y ago
  What does programming in my spare time have to do with studying for my job? I think the idea that the article was trying to convey was that the best programmers love the work enough that they'd be doing it on their own, even if they weren't paid for it. I work an 8 hour day. I may spend another several hours coding on some days, but I would characterize that as play, not work. I try to do things that I don't think I could convince anyone to pay me for.
HemanHeartYou 10y ago
>triggered

Benjammer 10y ago

This opinion needs to fucking die in a fire already.

lbn 10y ago
Is it really surprising that programmers that practise additional 10 to 15 hours a week improving their skills outside the scope of whatever project or tech stack they are limited to at work were better in this person's experience? It would be pretty incredible if spending a lot of free time on challenging personal projects made someone a worse developer or had no impact at all.
- Benjammer 10y ago
  Not denying your points. It's not the only way to be a good developer though, that's the idea I hate. It's about teaching yourself to be a good learner, which can be accomplished through a variety of hobbies that don't even need to be tech related. If programming at home is your jam, then more power to you. Saying that any developer who doesn't code on the side is, categorically, "sub-par" is ludicrous though.

mschuster91 10y ago

Not exactly, because someone who explores other technologies unrelated to his/her "work" field will inevitably pick up experience and knowledge - which the employer can grab for free without sending the employee to expensive courses or having to hire highly specialized freelancers. I have done a lot of weird things as "hobby" projects with even weirder technologies, including interfacing with smartcards in PHP (don't ask), working with cheap-ass Chinese thermoprinters, electronic chips, devkits, FPGAs, operating a mixed OpenLDAP/AD stack,... and I very often have profited at my job from the knowledge I gained while developing. Oh, and someone who never heard of Apache rewrite rules please shouldn't call himself a full-stack developer. Ops (and being able to formulate ops requirements to a hoster!) are a part of the stack, too, not just deploying some nodejs stuff to a container in the cloud.

cableshaft 10y ago
You're not wrong. But some people don't like to stare at a computer and program for 8 hours a day and then go home and keep doing it. They may have other responsibilities or other hobbies, or just a highly active social life. There was a time when I was younger where I spent a lot of time outside of work programming, but I also didn't have any other hobbies (well, playing video games doesn't really count), no responsibilities, and almost no social life. Now that I'm older and have all three, programming at home is a luxury I often choose not to do. But that doesn't make me a bad programmer.
- huehehue 10y ago
  One could just as easily argue that you're not a "bad programmer" specifically because you used to spend so much of your free time programming.
Benjammer 10y ago
But the point is that it totally depends on the person and it's not this hard and fast rule. It's also vague to the point of meaninglessness considering all the various kinds of technologies and depths within those technologies one might be toying with in their spare time. I would argue that the general intuition that many programmers have about people who code in their spare time is simply a too-narrow view of the picture. It's more about people who are really good at LEARNING, and people who code in their spare time tend to become very good at self-teaching new things and figuring out how different systems work and interact. A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing learning something in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in professional productivity.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > A developer can be good at learning as long as he or she is practicing learning something in their spare time, but I don't think it has to be a side project (or even technology-related at all) to see a benefit in professional productivity. This is an excellent point. I have lots of side projects outside of work. At the moment, none of them involve code but they all involve learning things; some of them are even fairly technical.

current_call 10y ago

The ability to automate is powerful. Anyone who doesn't find a use for it in their private life isn't just a mediocre developer; they're a mediocre human.

tedks 10y ago
I wouldn't go so far as to call people who don't see the universal relevance of computation "mediocre humans," but they're certainly missing out on a lot. Computers generalize cognition and memory at scales far beyond what humans are capable of. It's ludicrous to only ever write code to shuffle around cyberwidgets.
- current_call 10y ago
  I'm blunt because I feel strongly about it. They could be so much greater, but they willingly choose not to be. Then they lie to themselves about being just as good as anyone else despite being denied jobs.
current_call 10y ago
Sarah has a job as a web developer. She doesn't like programming very much, and avoids it at home. Her real passion is acting, so she joined a local theater troupe that performs plays at the community center. Every year they do a little Rocky Horror Picture Show event at the local theater. Frank is a programmer at a big bank. He does most of his work in COBOL. The work is tedious and the hours are long, but Frank doesn't mind. Work is supposed to be hard. Besides, he makes plenty of money, enough money to help his only son meet his tuition. Frank never really knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just sort of ended up where he is, but his wife and son are happy, and that makes Frank happy. Both of these people are mediocre developers and mediocre humans. They waste forty hours of every weekday developing skills that they won't use at home and only want so they can continue working at jobs they don't like. Turns out most people are mediocre. Those two aren't upset with what I posted, because they don't care, because they don't visit Hacker News, because they have lives. Lets talk about Jeff. Jeff is a sixteen year old atheist who loves science. He gets high grades in all his math and science classes. He can even handle English pretty well. He just does the readings in class! He loves talking about how great science is. When he's not talking about science or playing league of legends he's browsing the internet looking at things like the "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook page or r/atheism. Jeff is a happy intelligent scientific young man. He also doesn't do any science. Turns out looking at inspiring quotes on a space background isn't science.[0] Jeff's a pretty useless kid, but he's sixteen, so we'll give him a break. Mark is a student finishing his undergraduate degree in Computer Science, or maybe he's a man who's worked five years doing front-end development; doesn't matter. Mark is a programmer. He visits Hacker News to get the latest news, spends at least a couple hours a week on Reddit, keeps a small blog on Medium, hangs out with plenty of friends on the weekend, and enjoys a good beer. He doesn't use any of the stuff he's learned at school or work for his personal life. He doesn't host his resume on a personal website. He doesn't use regular expressions at home. He doesn't build a program to split games up into binary chunks so his kids can move games between computers without having to waste one of his expensive CDs.[1] He doesn't write any kind of automated backup scripts. He doesn't use anything like LaTex or org-mode for writing professional documents. He doesn't do anything like programming or related to programming in his spare time because it's boring and hard. Mark doesn't like it, but Mark doesn't care. He's making good money and there wasn't anything else he really wanted to do, but unlike old man Frank, Mark doesn't have an identity. Frank's family is what guides him. Frank thinks of himself as a family man and a provider. Mark thinks of himself as a programmer. Mark spends all his time on Hacker News, Reddit, and Medium reading and writing about software, but never ever coding for fun. When I talk about mediocre humans, I'm talking about the Marks of the world. If you're wasting your time reading my spiteful comments and naive Medium blog posts, then you identify as a software guy, and if you're a software guy you should be honing your craft instead of whining about unfair expectations from employers. Don't think for a second you're just as good as everyone else. You're not. [0] http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd [1] This is an example program from the book Programming Python

snhorne 10y ago

I quit reading here. This idea that programmers have to work 18-hour days just to avoid becoming substandard is idiotic. ps. if you have to spend all your free time studying to avoid losing your job, you never actually had any free time to begin with.

current_call 10y ago
This idea that programmers have to work 18-hour days just to avoid becoming substandard is idiotic. Is it stupid because it isn't true or is it stupid because you don't want it to be true?
- ScaryRacoon 10y ago
  It isn't true. If you use your time wisely then you will be just fine. If your employer doesn't give you the time/budget for on-going education, then you need to look for a new employer.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  it's stupid because it isn't true. the best and most productive programmers i know have lots of other hobbies and interests, both cerebral and physical. they are intellectually gifted people. if you need to try that hard, maybe you're just not that smart. i learned that early, because i'm not that smart, and working 18 hours a day sure as hell didn't fix that.
  - current_call 10y ago
    >if you need to try that hard Do people who program in their spare time usually work 18 hour days?
khedoros 10y ago
What does programming in my spare time have to do with studying for my job? I think the idea that the article was trying to convey was that the best programmers love the work enough that they'd be doing it on their own, even if they weren't paid for it. I work an 8 hour day. I may spend another several hours coding on some days, but I would characterize that as play, not work. I try to do things that I don't think I could convince anyone to pay me for.

HemanHeartYou 10y ago

>triggered