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Ask HN: Do You Code at Home?

• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• ohiovr 7y ago
  I'm self employed so I code at home. I would imagine though that if I were employed full time somewhere I'd rather not spend any more time working at home than I had to.
• rcarmo 7y ago
  Yeah, although I’ve tended to do that less and less over the years. I typically play with new languages, tweak my blog engine or do low-level coding for fun. Of course, this does not include stuff done during regular work hours when I do work from home.
• sj3k 7y ago
  Yep. I'm a slow tinkerer; mostly on the weekends for a couple hours at a time. Im trying to learn React Native and do the courses on fast.ai. I have a hard time motivating myself to code after work if I think I won't be able to work on a project for at least a couple hours at a time. Its hard to do with a wife, friends, community stuff.
• ioddly 7y ago
  Yes. I'm making slow progress on one personal project that I use on a daily basis. It's small by the standards of bigcorp code but the value to me is large. Other than that I tinker around a little bit, start things with different languages or libraries. Also I work remote so technically I write all of my code at home :P
• yulaow 7y ago
  I have three others main hobbies (powerlifting, videogames and novels books) and a fiance. I already give programming 40hours week (hoping to reduce them growing up), the remaining hours are for my other passions and my friends/family
• krapp 7y ago
  I do all of my coding at home, because I don't actually have a job writing code. All personal projects, and some attempts at contributing to Anarki. I literally have Visual Studio open right now while I waste time messing about here, working on hobby game development code that will never see a game.
• gitgud 7y ago
  Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program. - Linus Torvalds This hits home for me, Open Source development is mainly done by people who love it and work on projects after hours. I personally enjoy working on small webapp ideas and libraries to hopefully help others with their projects. The smaller the project the more likely it will be completed, so that's preferred.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  Try and stop me! However I’m not going to spend hours coding at home, and I’ll do fun and simple stuff. What I find hard is working on a complex ongoing project because that feels too much like what I do at work. On the other hand I don’t think you need to code at home to be good. If you have a job with some freedom to learn stuff during the day that helps a lot.
• tmtowtdi 7y ago
  It seems to depend how busy I am at work. If I'm in a less-busy time at work and am not doing a lot of actual progamming, I tend to come up with projects to do at home more. It's like there's a little itch that crops up; "you haven't made a thing in a while - go make a thing."
  • gravy 7y ago
    What kinds of things do you make?
    • tmtowtdi 7y ago
      Usually little tools for my own use. Lots of times they're things that already have good alternatives, but I wanted to see what I'd come up with - weather script, a show-me-my-router's-IP script, bash version of the mark/jump utility I've seen for zsh and fish shell. I got into making autoclickers for a while and signed up for a bunch of browser-based idle games, just to see if I could manage to control an autoclicker with Perl. For me it seems to be more about seeing if I can do something I haven't done before, or if I can make something that I personally like, than trying to make something that anybody else would find particularly useful.
• Silmarilos 7y ago
  I love to code at home, but it depends on the individual. I generally find that those who program on their own for their own reasons tend to be the best coders.
• dhruvkar 7y ago
  >> some people who I found were really knowledgeable don't code at home How old/what phase of life were they in? I find that, in general (anecdotally), this tends to slow down for most people as they age or advance in their careers. In the beginning, we have time/energy, desire to learn/advance our skills. As these tendencies reduce over time, only the more hard-core/passionate remain. So if say it's depends on this spectrum when asking knowledgeable programmers if they code at home. They might have already gone through that phase.
• namelosw 7y ago
  Yes but mostly learning novel technologies, and try it in some very small project or snippets. These days I'm reading the little typer and there's a dependent type language named Pie in it. It's really a pleasant to read. Things like this I probably no chance to learn and use at work for tens of years. So I have to do it off-work.
• happppy 7y ago
  Only when I want to learn something I am very much interested in, which is rare.
• otras 7y ago
  I transitioned into tech without a CS degree and did a great deal of coding at home outside of my day job to learn. At first my day job was tutoring, then customer support and some dev work, then a junior programming position, and now a software engineering position at a big tech co. Up until my current job I was always building projects and grinding outside of my work hours. At the big tech co I learn a great deal and do a lot of programming during the day, and I now enjoy a healthier work/life balance and spend time on the rest of my life. I also don't have that same "break into the industry" need, which is very freeing.
• zzo38computer 7y ago
  I do all of the computer programming at home.
• Doe22 7y ago
  I work from home somewhat regularly, so on those days I'll code at home for sure. If you're asking about doing personal coding projects outside of work then I only do that rarely. I do plenty of coding at work and generally want to decompress or do my own thing at home. Occasionally I'll try out a tutorial project or some small bit of learning, but that's typically it. If I wanted to seriously look for a new job I'd probably try to do something more.
• externalreality 7y ago
  I think many successful coders do not code at home. I do, and when I was a younger developer it wasn't a good thing. There needs to be a clean separation between work and home. Now that I am older I am better at keeping a separation between work and home. I can even work from home and keep a clean separation now strangely enough.
• drakonka 7y ago
  I love to code at home and it's very important to me. I've had many hobby projects over the years. Aside from fulfilling a curiosity to learn and experiment with things that may not be directly relevant to my day job, I find that when work gets stressful coding in my spare time helps keep me grounded and helps me relax. Until fairly recently I used to have periods where I'd have to put in a lot of hours at work ahead of a deadline or release and I believe having my own projects to focus on in what little spare time I did have also helped prevent burnout - it's a nice reminder that I have my own thing going outside of my day job.
• oaw-bct-ar-bamf 7y ago
  No. I devoted 5 years to study computer science. I won’t program if it’s not getting paid for. Separation of work and private life is important for me.
• dev_north_east 7y ago
  I only ever code at home when I'm prepping for an interview.