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Ask HN: Why aren't you coding?

• utf_8x 6y ago
  Simple, it's Friday :)
• killingtime74 6y ago
  There's always more reading/planning than typing. Maybe that's part of coding?
• thinkingemote 6y ago
  Because I am reading and commenting on Hacker news!
• CM30 6y ago
  Because in a sense I'm being paid not to write code. Company put me on furlough due to budget problems, but are paying the remaining 20% of my salary, so I'm basically being paid my full wage to not work.
• chrisBob 6y ago
  This year: most of the time I am not coding is because I am making sure my 6-year-old is paying attention to Zoom Kindergarten.
• kuroguro 6y ago
  Unmotivated, I need a break T____T
• santa_boy 6y ago
  What are the tools for making such comics? :)
• gauku 6y ago
  Reading papers that would need coding soon.
• nexthash 6y ago
  I guess I have coder's block... the thought of a big project makes me more reluctant to start.
  • xaedes 6y ago
    I was in one of these for a few months. Strangely enough, changing all my editors color schemes from darkmode to whitemode helped me to overcome it. Over time I went back to darkmode for the most part. Maybe it is similar to working from a different place? (e.g. coding sitting in park instead of the same old office day-in day-out)
    • stnmtn 6y ago
      I definitely can second this, changing something about my tools can jump-start stuff. Another example is "productivity apps". I was using one for ~1 year and it was going great until the last few months. I simply changed to a different one and now I'm using it much more than I was. I think just changing the stuff you use all the time is something that is under-appreciated
  • yoav 6y ago
    The trick here is to break it into the smallest possible pieces and just start doing the first piece as your only task for today. Most likely that will build momentum. Can also try accomplishing a small not-work task like laundry or something to solve it from the other end. (You’ll feel like you can take on bigger pieces because you just accomplished something) Lastly reading the specs or playing with the app with no other windows open and eventually boredom will take over and you’ll start making bits of progress.
• Kaze404 6y ago
  ... Final Fantasy XIV
• jkhdigital 6y ago
  Forgot to refill my ADHD medication
• tomxor 6y ago
  I am paid to solve problems, programming is one part of that, thinking about the problem and the code is a prerequisite to programming. Sometimes one needs to step back and let things sink in rather than continuous action (programming)... while doing that you can even play games, I'll admit some activities are better than others for the purpose of de-focusing your subconscious - but sometimes you also just need a short mental break, that's often when I go to HN. For the same reason our job's don't stop when we go home (or turn off slack) either, we are essentially paid to think and our brains do not care about the arbitrary thresholds set by 9-5. I fully realise how much someone is actually able to practice this has more to do with the organisation they work for appreciating the difference between cognitive and manual work.
  • rob74 6y ago
    That period of time between 5 and 9 the next morning is actually there for the mental break you mentioned before. I'm not advocating a very strict separation between work and free time, but if the line between the two blurs too much (made easier by home office), your work might completely invade your free time, which isn't good either...
    • tomxor 6y ago
      > work might completely invade your free time Yes, I agree but also feel it's a natural risk for any cognitive work. But not every day feels very effective forcing work hours for me, it's a hard balance, one I usually ensure stays in check with some outdoor activities that are currently not allowed :/
  • yoav 6y ago
    While off topic I’d echo this for managing coders as well. A lot of the problem set is debugging people and teams. For example “why is x person performing differently” and the debugger are time boxed to 1:1s, sprint cadence meetings, and looking at output, so the thinking between those debugging events is increased because you can’t just brute force it like a sticky code problem. I think the pandemic has worsened this. Pre-pandemic I had a 40 min walk buffer to and from work where I’d naturally start thinking about my own life. Others had dedicated offices at home and other social interactions, or a coworking space. Now most social interactions and validation for many come from work slack or zoom, no commute for everyone, and for those in smaller spaces their living room or kitchen or bedroom is their office so work is always within reach and their is no buffer. There’s also not much else to do. So even if you can pull yourself away from your laptop your thoughts are more often than not focused on solving these kinds of work problems.
• purrpit 6y ago
  I got promoted to tech lead for writing good code and now I have subordinates who wrote shitty code which I have to review. So I don't get to write code myself. tl;dr: not my KRA anymore.
• techn00 6y ago
  Read-only friday
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  Some recent reasons: 1. I am stuck in a meeting 2. Everyone is arguing about requirements in Slack and I am waiting for that to sort itself out. 3. I am coding, just a Reddit script instead of my work. 4. A fellow developer friend is also not coding and wanted to chat. 5. My Surface blue screened. 6. I have to write a pull request 7. The API I am working with is down 8. With work from home, my thoughts drift to napping 9. I am on Udemy figuring how to code it
  • 8note 6y ago
    2.5 the requirements fifmg sort themselves out over slack/meetings, so now I'm writing a doc to close them out. -> my afternoon today
• notsgnik 6y ago
  "because I'm compiling the kernel for the 8th time, waiting for my manager to ask me what I'm busy with so he'll know I do a job he can't. Witch kept me hired so far" ( not from me, yet true )
• 1sideofthecoin 6y ago
  I'm spending less time coding now, but still writes more code than ever before. That's because I'm getting better at my craftsmanship. The issue is what I'm doing when I'm not coding.. meetings, chats etc. Total waste of time if you ask me.
• grigarav 6y ago
  Stack Overflow.
• mekael 6y ago
  1. Napping 2. Obtaining coffee to stop the onset of napping 3. Code reviews
• impostervt 6y ago
  Because I'm waiting for another developer to finish his part of the code that my part of the code is supposed to talk to.
• yetihehe 6y ago
  I'm constantly bombarded with "quick" questions from coworkers about how some part of my code works (or more often why it doesn't). After several such interruptions it's harder and harder to even try to focus, maybe some kind of neurosis, fear of being interrupted once you are again in flow?
  • grigarav 6y ago
    I just get bombarded with the likes of "Excuse me, but how do I view the code behind an SQL view?"
    • yetihehe 6y ago
      Ehh, mine are typically very valid, specific and informed questions. I'm blessed with very smart coworkers, but we are seriously understaffed and documentation is lacking. When you "own" very big lightly documented system, questions happen.
  • carlivar 6y ago
    Try the Pomodoro Technique and make sure to close Slack and other distractions.
  • sethammons 6y ago
    If you are on a team, we’ve addressed this by having a single dev responsible for all incoming questions in our team channel. Any DMs are directed back to the team channel for the designated on call person. The on call person, for the week, doesn’t have sprint commitments. If they have time, they can choose to help the sprint or work to reduce toil.
  • yoav 6y ago
    I’ve been there before. Would recommend starting a document and answering the questions there then linking people to the doc after you’d added their question/answer. The habit of check the docs first and maintaining docs in this way is really critical for remote teams and bandwidth.
  • onion2k 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• junon 6y ago
  Thinking through a very complex and delicate concept, trying to come up with the best way to solve it. It's been a few weeks.
• throwaway923785 6y ago
  Working on a project that is being wound down due to lack of sales but the remaining tasks are asinine compliance requirements imposed by the new parent company - we have been acquired recently - that are "non-negotiable" even when the project is going to be sunset soon. Management also is dragging its feet in finding a new project for me. Motivation to play along is low. Working from home as single is doing its own part. Management doesn't seem as isolated because they're in calls all day or have family.
  • joncrane 6y ago
    I know this isn't an advice thread but 1) milk it while you're still collecting salary and 2) make sure your LinkedIn profile is fleshed out and your resume is clean and up to date 3) hit up your former coworkers to ask how their new job is...maybe let it slip you're looking to move Good luck!
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• amalcon 6y ago
  The most common reason I'm blocked from coding is that I'm still doing the analysis necessary to figure out what needs to be coded. Examples: - I am currently not coding because I have a profile running, to figure out which part of the code I'm working on is slow before fixing it. - Shortly after pandemic lockdowns, I was not coding because my employer had a problem, and we could only come up with two solutions to it. Both were very high-touch, in the sense that either would require hundreds of dev-hours divided across at least a dozen individual developers. I was not coding for about two weeks there because I was the one tasked with doing an inventory of all that work, so we could make an informed decision about which solution to pursue. The other way of putting this: The job of a software engineer is not just (or often even mostly) coding.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rhn_mk1 6y ago
  Daunting task ahead, little progress in sight.
• mauvehaus 6y ago
  Because I build furniture now and I'm much happier for it. Why am I not doing that right now? Because I'm waiting for some of my mistakes to get enough heat into the wood stove so I can leave it to its own devices and head to the shop.
  • bartvk 6y ago
    Although that's cool, OP aimed his question at "developers who are being paid to write code".
• koski_pindora 6y ago
  I'm not currently coding because running a company, talking with customers, learning to build hardware, solving electricity and magnetic problems. Coding maybe every second week.
• xyzal 6y ago
  Lack of sleep, have a young child at home ... can't really focus on anything else but documenting own older code or watching lectures right now.
  • huhtenberg 6y ago
    Been through this and in retrospect this was a blessing in disguise. Instead of sitting down and writing a draft code version, then reworking it, then reworking it again, then realizing there's a better way to do/structure the same, discarding it and making a clean version I was forced (by the baby-centric lifestyle) to think it all through in the head first. I would then sit down and emit the final version on the first try. The best part is that it also took noticeably less time than the iterative "hands-on" approach.
    • topkai22 6y ago
      Not quite this, but I think the enforced discipline of parenthood has made me a better worker overall. My ability to procrastinate hasn’t been eliminated, but every moment available to work feels more precious so I’m much better about just jumping in and getting things done. I also have hard stops and self imposed deadlines like I didn’t before, so I’m more efficient in “just getting things done.”
• timwaagh 6y ago
  Java websphere stack is such a waiting game. Besides I don't love code.
  • monster_group 6y ago
    If you're running Websphere locally, exclude WS folders from anti-virus scanning. It will considerably speed up WS start up.
    • timwaagh 6y ago
      I don't think the system I use it on even has anti virus. What I mean is after I do a code change I have to remove all packages from the server, clean the server, run a build, add all packages to server. All of those take minutes.
• monster_group 6y ago
  Because I am working on another team's code base and my code merges are dependent on their whims and schedule. Submit pull request, wait for one week for somebody to review and give feedback (all of which is bullshit nitpicks about spacing, one style of unit tests over another etc.), implement the feedback, wait for another ten days for the same person to review again and provide another round of more bullshit feedback. In the meantime, my boss says you are not coding enough to get promoted to the next level. I have started doing LeetCode because I was concerned that I might forget coding and also it will help me find another job.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• eb0la 6y ago
  Writing a proposal for a customer in the millions range. Not coding; but figuring out if we undestand well the rewquiremente, figuring out what has to be done, when, how, and whay kind of problems might arise (imagination is important, and beigng pessimistic, too). On monday, I will git pull the repo and add some test the team needed to write, but had no time to code.
• danieka 6y ago
  Waiting for NPM to install packages Waiting for units tests to run Finding the perfect Giphy to slack my colleagues Fetching coffe Installing OSX updates
• EliRivers 6y ago
  from developers who are being paid to write code Who is paid to write code? I'm paid to ensure my team delivers quality software, on time and to spec. Typing out code is the least difficult part of that.
  • pliftkl 6y ago
    I'm always amazed at people who think that programming languages and typing and editing are the hard part of what software engineers do. I spend much more time trying to understand the problem that I'm trying to solve, and to make decisions about how to do that in a way that I won't regret.
  • yetihehe 6y ago
    I'm paid to write (valid, working) code. If I sit all month just thinking but no effects, I will be fired. Of course, thinking about what code to write is a big part, I've spent twoo weeks once not writing code and the result was changing one number from 4096 to 8192, which made one shitty iot device a little more stable, which was seen as a big success. So, I wrote 4 bytes/2weeks, most of it was thinking and finding what to change, but essentially it WAS writing code.
• paulpauper 6y ago
  Too much time and work involved, but the problem with buying software is you get too much bloat and poorly coded stuff despite having more features. Even if you are an amateur, coding it yourself can produce better results than even off the shelf stuff.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• xena 6y ago
  Because I have a life.
• jdmoreira 6y ago
  I'm not coding because there are more important things to be done. For example: - I have to groom tasks and interfaces across team boundaries. - I have to review others code. - I have to help someone with their problem so they can proceed and deliver. - I have to onboard. - I have to make sure processes are working well. - I have to make sure the team works well. - and so on and on... Some programmers are much more valuable to their employer than just for the code they write. You don’t become a 10x engineer (if such thing even exist) by writing 10x more code but you can enable others and make sure things work and easily deliver multiple times more value. Good managers understand this very well.
  • pictur 6y ago
    so, does doing these make you a good manager? interesting.
    • 8note 6y ago
      Understanding that these are valuable engineering tasks makes you a good manager. Doing them makes you a good engineer
      • pictur 6y ago
        strange aphorisms
• austincheney 6y ago
  As a JavaScript developer I am paid to use enormous frameworks. Solving problems or returning value back to the business are often (not wanted) beside the point. Attempting to program real solutions in this line of work frequently results in hostility from your coworkers.
• anonymoushn 6y ago
  The last time I was paid to be a developer by a company, the most prominent reasons I was not writing code were: 1. I am in the 5th meeting to discuss the details of a 10-page document about a feature that would take 100LOC to write if we weren't using Spring. 2. I am waiting for a dependency manager that is incapable of resuming downloads to download my dependencies from the private repository of dependencies which is located overseas, and my ISP has shitty QOS to that location, and the company's dozens of network and infra people don't think it's worthwhile to set up a proxy on this continent. Or I am using wget to download the dependencies and manually moving them into the dependency manager's cache on the filesystem, which is still slow, but more certain to eventually succeed, since wget can resume downloads. 3. I am learning in my 1:1 that if another developer on my team has attempted to set up some alerting, and our QA has signed off on the alerting, and our SRE has signed off on the alerting, but the alerting is not actually working, it is my responsibility to ensure that the alerting is actually working before my manager learns that it is not working. So I should just do all the work that nominally belongs to my teammates all the time, and delegating tasks is some fake thing to make others feel good, not an actual way to designate a DRI for an objective.
  • Thorentis 6y ago
    > it is my responsibility to ensure that the alerting is actually working > delegating tasks is some fake thing to make others feel good Somebody has to ultimately be responsible though right? If you're a team lead, isn't it still your responsibility to make sure the work your team has done is actually working before you tell your manager that it is?
    • pkaye 6y ago
      If the developer, QA and SRE signed off on it, what more should the team lead do?
    • anonymoushn 6y ago
      I was not a team lead. I was an IC who had written a design doc for a feature.
    • 6y ago
• benibela 6y ago
  I am not paid to write code. I am a scientist, paid to write papers, grants, and a summary of my PhD. Now why am I not writing the grant? Because I would rather write code
• jlelse 6y ago
  Not answering your question, but nice comics you have there. Is there an RSS feed?
• pliftkl 6y ago
  One of the best software engineers who worked for me was the guy who deleted the most code. He absolutely produced negative net lines of code, and it was a running joke that we were paying him to write code, but he was doing the opposite.
• sethammons 6y ago
  Queue Hal changing a lightbulb: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gp98t https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gp98t Yesterday I was not coding because my simple change required a bloom filter. I spent a little time finding an appropriate package. I went to import it and my IDE couldn’t. Now I am trying to find why the the manifest is borked, decided to re-pull all dependencies from scratch, find out three of them are incompatible, so I have to figure out what version to pin them to, etc. One lib had a breaking change in a patch version that I could address in our code. Cool, now back to using a bloom filter... And our integration tests are more and more brittle as we put more and more services into our docker compose files. And they take longer and longer.
• jbob2000 6y ago
  I’ve discovered that using my coding skills as leverage against the management class is the best way to earn more. So I’m not coding until I get promoted. I got a raise and a promotion last year, did about 2 weeks of work to give the management the marketing feature they wanted, and now I rest. I’m currently holding out on another marketing feature because the management has no choice but to go with me (deadlines, talent challenge, budget challenge). So I’m using my skills as leverage to earn more. I told my VP that this feature can’t be delivered until I’m made a Director.
• sys_64738 6y ago
  I spend ~5% of my time writing new code. The rest is spent doing other tasks.
• irvingprime 6y ago
  Because my boss's boss has sent down a directive that there will be NO MORE MEETINGS. This then requires every manager to meet with everyone they have ever talked to (not just their direct reports) to explain that there will be no more meetings. However, customer meetings are exempt, so the time previously taken up by meetings with co-workers is now used by sales and project management to "improve communication" about the customer needs or to "give them higher visibility" into our (non-existent) progress.
• Piotr2993 6y ago
  Because I'm not paid to code but to produce software
• PopGreene 6y ago
  At a previous job, I was asked to write up a list of my accomplishments for the previous year in preparation for my performance evaluation. During the evaluation my manager and I went over this list and I commented that it seemed to me that I hadn't accomplished a year's worth of work. He as happy with my work but acknowledged that there were a lot of things I did that wouldn't go on the list and I can't be expected to be producing all of the time. I suppose that's like focus factor in Scrum. I still think it took too long to complete some tasks. They would occasionally bog down while I had to noodle with existing code to be able to add new features. So even if I'm coding, I may not be creating value but rather I'm paying down the company's technical debt.
• PopGreene 6y ago
  I finally checked out the link. You're looking for material to use in a comic? And I'm trying to give you a serious answer. Maybe these experiences will help: Had a coworker get promoted way past his level of incompetence. He never accomplished much before, but afterward he spent all of his time lobbying for his ideas and undermining those of us that were trying to get work done. Wasted a lot of time dealing with him until mgmt got a rare clue. Another coworker would ask a 5 minute question and an hour later come back and spend a 1/2 hour telling me over and over how my answer helped him solve his problem. Incomprehensible emails from corporate telling us something that might or might not be important. We had to try to decipher them to be sure. Much unproductive discussion ensues. Had an company exec that liked to go around glad handing everyone. Nice guy, but man could he blow a couple hours of our time. Woman in the next cubicle arguing with her kids over the phone - loudly - for two hours. A loud snuffler in another cubicle. Still can't understand how he didn't give himself brain damage. Yak shaving: get a bug report. Run the debugger: crashes with no message. Research debugger failure to no avail. Go to file a problem report: reporting tool is down. I'm sure a lot of people have this problem: naming things. Can't code until you figure out what that variable should be called.
  • hansvm 6y ago
    > I'm sure a lot of people have this problem: naming things. Can't code until you figure out what that variable should be called. i, j, k, foo, bar, baz, and don't waste a moment thinking about it till your solution is finished and warrants a once-over (or till it has grown sufficiently complicated that a real name is finally necessary even if temporary -- try to work in small enough units that this never happens).
    • vageli 6y ago
      This reminds me of advice I learned in school for writing: if you are having trouble coming up with an introduction, just write as if you already introduced the topic and come back to the intro afterward.
    • 8note 6y ago
      I generally think that if I can't find a good name for a thing, I don't actually know what it does yet, so Im not ready to code it. I, j, and k have clear definitions as basis vectors, so they can be used, but I don't think I'd ever call a variable foo or bar
• gremlinsinc 6y ago
  - Burned out - Depressed - Anxious - Covid-induced (likely) brain fog (maybe the depression/anxiety also is from presumably having covid back in April) - Can't find a freelance client - Broke - Want a passion project - Want to be part of a co-op not a cog in a machine - Want to be on a team again - Can't pick a side project to work on for some cashflow - Too busy promoting my gofundme to pay rent - Want to be a game dev this week - Will want to be a systems dev next week - Wanted to be a blockchain dev last week - ADHD (apparent?) - Mid-life crisis? Or is it just covid brain - Wow, this has been catharctic just free-writing like this. - Are you still reading this? - Really bad schedule - Brain struggling with organization - MOTIVATION <--- mostly that..or the lack thereof. - I'm 41, I guess as senior a dev as you can be in php/vue, feel like a junior dev, imposter syndrome.
  • burnthrow 6y ago
    Start by getting off of HN and Reddit. Turn off non-local news.
    • 8note 6y ago
      Turn off local news too. It's been taken over by other interests
• sxp 6y ago
  I'm not coding because I'm reading a webcomic about why other people aren't coding. Feature request: when someone goes to "https://whyarentyoucoding.com/ https://whyarentyoucoding.com/", can you cleanly redirect them to "whyarentyoucoding.com/NAMEOFCURRENTCOMIC"? It makes it easier to share the latest comic since sharing whyarentyoucoding.com results in a stale link after a few days.
  • Jugurtha 6y ago
    For the wrong reasons, I wanted to see "Too many redirects" in there.
• marethyu 6y ago
  to browse pornhub
• dang 6y ago
  Internet comments. Emails. Startup launches.
• subprotocol 6y ago
  Because I'm in a zoom meeting while reading hacker news.
• tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
  Because I'm an engineering manager :p I do try and find time to code on the weekends, but the pandemic has all but destroyed my motivation to do anything beyond the bare minimum.
• gherkinnn 6y ago
  Going for a walk. Many problems solve themselves during a walk. M
  • nineteen999 6y ago
    Also sleep for me. So many times I've woken up in the morning with an obvious solution to something that had stumped me the previous day.
• janpot 6y ago
  Compiling! (https://xkcd.com/303/ https://xkcd.com/303/)
• enneff 6y ago
  Because my job is only about 40% programming. The rest of it is strategy, design, mentoring, and code review.
• beznet 6y ago
  I have a date/time bug that I really dont feel like figuring out right now
• RHSman2 6y ago
  Cos I’m making music
• meheleventyone 6y ago
  Mainly because I’m helping other people be able to code. One of the interesting things about the 10x engineer meme is that they’re 10x because they improve the productivity of their team. Well extend that to DevRel and that’s maybe another order of magnitude or two of effect again. Extend that to the average person looking to build and it’s another order or perhaps two again. Hopefully the stuff I’m doing now will get ten people off the ground immediately (I already know it’s reached at least this many people) but another 1000 going this year and another 10,000 if not more going over the next two years. Whereas my programming and design work has only reached tens of thousands interacting with it over the last two years this is hopefully seeding for a big future.
  • jokethrowaway 6y ago
    The 10x engineer being an enabler is a nice interpretation but the original definition of a 10x engineer is a skilled engineer working unhealthy hours. The enabler 10x engineer may be true - even though I've never found managers so good to multiply their team output dramatically while I've met 10x engineers building incredibly fast and slaving away for a chance to make millions. It could be that's because I found enablers in large companies, where no-one is motivated enough to make millions for rich shareholders somewhere.
    • redis_mlc 6y ago
      > the original definition of a 10x engineer is a skilled engineer working unhealthy hours. No, your narrative is that of "working unhealthy hours." Generally a 10x engineer is just said to get 10x more results. Most successful startups in SV have one.
    • pcthrowaway 6y ago
      I worked on a team with a 10x coder, who was 10x because he improved the rest of the team. Would jump in when people got stuck and unstick them by seeing the yak immediately, where others would just work their way up to it one stack frame at a time. Had a better knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on the team than they did, and knew how to nudge them towards the work they would excel at without making them feel incapable of the other work. Would unstick people by finding out how they could help other people who were also stuck and vice versa. He got promoted to manager after basically doing managing the way it should be done, without us ever making us feel like we were being managed. And it really was a golden time for our team. Except he quit not long after. Not sure why, but I suspect management brought along a lot of other responsibilities (interfacing with accounting, HR, higher-level management, etc.) that he didn't really enjoy.
• madengr 6y ago
  Because I do hardware.
• ambicapter 6y ago
  I'm most comfortable coding in a unix environment, but I built/bought a windows computer to play video games on, and I'm too lazy to either install a linux distro on here, or setup a dev environment using WSL, etc. Also, I don't really have any projects in mind that are grabbing my fancy.
  • acdw 6y ago
    Same, except I have to use Windows without an Admin account at work .. tho you'd be surprised what I can get done in that box!
  • tootahe45 6y ago
    What about using vmware workstation to run a Linux VM? i find it useful to keep dev stuff separate and have a disposable OS when i install too much junk.
  • moozilla 6y ago
    I was in a similar spot, except with the addition that I gave up on installing a Linux VM/WSL because my gaming laptop came with Windows 10 Home (which doesn't support Hyper-V) and I didn't want to shell out $100. However, recently I gave it another shot, as WSL2 apparently works just fine on Windows 10 Home, and I was surprised how easy it was to set up. Took me less than an hour to get WSL2 set up and hooked into VSCode with all my preferred settings. I recommend giving it a shot next time you have some inspiration.
• arsenide 6y ago
  Recently... 1. On StackOverflow learning more about how C# works under the hood to understand memory/CPU usage (newer to C#, used C++ in a past life) 2. Building/debugging a spreadsheet in Excel (not a software engineer by job description) 3. Debugging software issues on hardware by messing with the hardware 4. Thinking about how to code to solve the problem; drawing/writing things out, etc.; rather than just diving in head-first (need to do this more...)
• acdw 6y ago
  I'm very much an amateur, and unless I have a project, I don't really code. My projects are generally configuring various WMs or Emacs, or weird stuff, like Gemini browsers, an abortive clicker game, et al.
• Aeolun 6y ago
  I’m gathering requirements. Since all my projects are badly under (or over) specified. So, a lot of my time is spent making sure I give my team something they can work with. — Another one is that our dev environment is broken. Our developers have a bad habit of deploying their local branches without integrating the latest version of master. And suddenly the UI devs are twiddling their thumbs because someone has to run a 20+m deployment to get it back up to date.
• anw 6y ago
  Because Coding is not Working. Coding is not Planning. Coding is not Being Efficient. Coding is not Accomplishing Goals. Coding is not Saving Money. Coding is not Gaining Customers. I am getting paid to get things done in a good manner. If I wanted to have a house built for me, I would not expect to pay somebody and immediately have them start laying bricks without them looking at the land, taking soil samples, sketching up drafts of what the house should look like within the constraints available, and then plan the foundation of which to start building. If they came and immediately just started laying bricks, I'd know I have a really shitty house builder. I mean no offense by this, but "why aren't you X" is a bit naïve and comes off as lacking a good amount of experience in that field. There are many reasons why not doing X is right, including social/mental recovery and prevention of burnout.
  • sanderjd 6y ago
    Yep, the answer to this question for me is pretty much always "because I'm communicating", followed closely by "because I'm reading". Coordination and research are a bigger and more important part of my job than coding (which is also important).
  • oneplane 6y ago
    It's possible the question is meant as "in the context of wanting to code and having something to code, what is impeding your desire and goal to code at the moment?".
  • serial_dev 6y ago
    Good point, happened to me today. The UI requirements to my ticket didn't make sense. The changes the other dev wanted would have took us possible days. I was hesitant to start, so I asked another dev... He said something totally different, he kept referring to something the designer wanted, but it didn't make sense to me, either. I called the designer and she told me she never said that and we agreed on something else. After confirming with another dev in chat that the designer was right, I could start coding. In the end, after 20 minutes of calls/chat and around 30 minutes coding, the issue was resolved. I saved so much time (days, really) just by being a bit sceptical. I'm new on the team, so first I thought it is just me who can't follow everything, then asked around and realized that the level of miscommunication is shocking and people don't even realize that they don't understand things and act like everything is trivially simple (the team looks good, though).
• thom 6y ago
  Accidentally became a manager.
• jdauriemma 6y ago
  I’m on parental leave
  • tobmlt 6y ago
    Congrats! Me too, until recently.
• keyle 6y ago
  I'm stroking my beard and thinking hard about a problem, trying to sink back into some kind of productivity about being interrupted 3 times in the last 10 mins. Probably stretching my back, feeling the tiredness in my shoulders, noticing my coffee has gone cold, thinking about the next cup; with an added sense of regrets for the wasted time and gut wrenching sadness about how fast I used to be at programming. But honestly the fact is the sheer complexity of the problems I'm looking at requires so much thinking. That complexity wasn't there in the older days. There were also a lot less people involved in a project and that causes added complexity, in fact, exponential complexity to most changes in code, since code has become product. Code is now of biblical importance. In the olden days, it was about getting things done. Today, you write code that could make or break the company. People judge you on 5 lines you've written 6 months ago within thousands of other lines; the more experienced you are, the more ways you can implement something, with many consequences compounded by who's going to use it and how within the next 5 years.
• loriverkutya 6y ago
  Developers are not paid to write code, they are paid to come up with a software solution to a (usually business) problem.
• LeicaLatte 6y ago
  I am playing video games.
• narag 6y ago
  I take you'd better read an honest answer about what makes people avoid positions where there's much coding in favor of others rather than some joke or anecdote about why I'm not coding right now. Coding has the seed of burnout. Not everybody ends up burning. Most people control it. Some people build barriers to contain it. Some people develop intrincate kinds of neurosis. Some people use drugs. Some blows up. Dealing with machines is frustrating. Dealing with humans too, but machines are more difficult to hate. The printer scene in Office Space is hillarious just because that.
• thosakwe 6y ago
  I'm busy learning art. All of the things I want to make (mostly games) will require good art, so this is as good an opportunity as ever to focus on that.
• lfowles 6y ago
  Because I'm designing
• agumonkey 6y ago
  reading more books to think better and doing manual labour to cleanse my soul
• CarVac 6y ago
  I'm waiting for CI to run.
• TameAntelope 6y ago
  I'm not coding because I don't believe the work I need to get done will fix the issues I've run into while trying to get my work done, and it's hard to find motivation in that situation. In other words, I'm not working on The Real Problem, I'm adding a feature.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• freedomben 6y ago
  Because I'm on HN :-D More seriously, I'm continually getting interrupted with support cases, and my head is destroyed.
• jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Mobbing and pairing. Not only they reduce the team output (pairing is acceptable because you're doing a pull request review at the same time, mobbing has a driver and someone helping around and the rest of the team barely follow along), they are also incredibly draining and I can't bring myself to do much more when the session is over. I tried to raise it as a problem but we want to standardise practices and "be more collaborative". We're getting culture mandated from above and they hired an agile coach.
• muterad_murilax 6y ago
  Because I'm a pro procrastinator.
• nichochar 6y ago
  Technicians should be coding all the time. Engineers should be solving problems. Sometimes it will be coding, sometimes it will be asking questions, sometimes it will be thinking, etc... The more senior I become in my career, the more I realize that less is more, with coding. There is no thinking tech debt.
• trusttherust 6y ago
  When you do contracting, you outline a maximum number of hours you can charge. It's usually <=20/week for any given client if you have high rates. You don't usually get overtime or benefits, so working more than ~120% time sets a bad precedent. (It's good to do right by your clients, and people appreciate not being specifically billed for small things) Setting aside time to not-work is a good hedge against getting over-committed, especially since individual contracts can ebb and flow in the volume of work required. Also, do you realize exactly when you are asking this question? It's two days before Valentine's Day, and a Friday evening for most readers. I know this is Hacker News, but I'm kind of surprised at how tame the responses are.
  • uh_uh 6y ago
    > When you do contracting, you outline a maximum number of hours you can charge. It's usually <=20/week for any given client if you have high rates. Is this really the norm? I was under the impression that charging 30+ hours can easily happen. Especially if the contract is for longer term and it's practically a mini-employment.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• jiqiren 6y ago
  after setting up all the boilerplate I lost my steam.
• rramadass 6y ago
  To paraphrase Charles Babbage; I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• anonuser123456 6y ago
  97% of my time is spent debugging(other people’s code), profiling, reading code, working on automation etc. The larger system you work on, the larger fraction is spent on non-coding. I happen to work on a source base of ~14 million LoC.
• andrewzah 6y ago
  What does "coding" exactly mean here? If we include the whiteboarding and sketches, I'm coding all the time! If we're talking about literally inputting code, well it's because it's very difficult to solve hard problems without some sort of planning first. Also, administration of issue trackers, etc. Meetings. Helping a coworker. Writing documentation. Waiting on a response from a 3rd party vendor, etc.
• chadcmulligan 6y ago
  Because my compiles take to long - just noticed this. My compile takes a minute or so, so I flick to hacker news, reddit etc while waiting, then what was I doing...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• watersb 6y ago
  If I write code when I feel physically unwell or tired, I have to undo it later. If I wander HN in the same mental fugue state, I often find things that save me effort later.
  • invalidOrTaken 6y ago
    hear hear
• etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
  I'm way too tired.
• khazhoux 6y ago
  Because my title includes the word "Engineering Manager", which means if I code people will think I'm a shitty manager who should be an IC. So instead I'm required to write a bunch of docs and attend meetings, and explain ideas to smart developers who don't quite get it the first few times... but once in a while I'll crank out a demo to show the team the way, quietly fearing my career advancement opportunities diminish if my own leadership finds out :-) Only slightly exaggerating. Still, it's no fun being stuck between loving to code and building virtual machines with my own hands, and loving to lead teams and drive projects and see the amplified output of a group working together.
• d_burfoot 6y ago
  I'm fighting with the tools.
• mechnesium 6y ago
  I’m not coding because I’m busy searching code snippets on StackOverflow to string together something that just works. I’m not here to write the most optimal solution in the current flavor of the month language that some asshole that comes after me is going to undo. I’m here to get shit done as fast as possible. Learning is merely a side effect of getting shit done.
• buggythebug 6y ago
  This question doesn't make any sense - developers who are being paid to write code are coding. What is the question?
• Uhhrrr 6y ago
  I finished coding something ten seconds ago, and am taking a break on HN.
• alaties 6y ago
  Depression and medication side effects I'm still working through. There's an intense fog that forms in my head when I try to think through a problem that didn't use to be there. Even problems I've solved before I have much greater difficulty with than I remember having.
• dccoolgai 6y ago
  Day job >> Kids >> wife >> dishes >> laundry >> bills >> depression I have to break through all these barriers to get to spend a minute after work writing code. Before pandemic, would happen like once every other week, maybe. Now it's like once every three months.
• werber 6y ago
  My idea isn't "good enough"
• jmchuster 6y ago
  Code you write is code everyone will now have to maintain forever, so naively, you want to solve problems with as little code as possible, and maximize the value being generated by your codebase. So you should be spending your time on... properly validating the business value of your projects, properly designing what a system should look like on paper, properly considering use cases and edge cases, finding what code can be eliminated, finding what code can be refactored, finding the single line that you need to change to make it all work. > The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn. is preferable to > $10,000 for building a new printing press system from scratch.
  • TheDudeMan 6y ago
    > Code you write is code everyone will now have to maintain forever False. You may throw code away. Also, did you visit the link?
    • 8note 6y ago
      You can't easily throw away code that somebody else depends on. If you put something useful up, you're stuck with it for a long time, and getting rid of it is another time investment
      • TheDudeMan 6y ago
        The question was not "Why aren't you writing code that someone else depends on?" Coding can be purely a learning process.
    • jmchuster 6y ago
      Sure, you can make a bunch of funny comics: Someone is furiously writing as much code as possible, and the next panel is someone else furiously trying to delete it as fast as possible. Someone stayed up all night to rush to complete something after someone asked for a feature, and then the next day they find out that guy didn't even work there. A team spends 5 months refactoring their webapp to force it to fit into 512mb, and then in their final presentation someone asks, why not just buy a 2gb stick of memory? https://thedailywtf.com/articles/That-Wouldve-Been-an-Option-Too https://thedailywtf.com/articles/That-Wouldve-Been-an-Option...
• lumost 6y ago
  In a theoretically optimal world, all engineers would have immediate and omniscient knowledge of all dependent teams, and stakeholders interests. They would also have immediate knowledge of all system complexities and have no operational burden or customer's that they need to help. Of course in this optimal world engineers would always have instant access to all knowledge of their toolchain and not need to perform research, and the build would of course never break. The unfortunate reality is that developing roadmaps/managing stakeholders/building team collaboration takes a large amount of time. Arguably 90% of this effort could be eliminated if the number of stakeholders was reduced, or the company exercised more trust that their engineers were working on the right things. There is a tremendous amount of waste introduced by the endless tracking of engineering deliverables.
  • 8note 6y ago
    Haha, if there were no problems to solve, you wouldn't need to spend time solving problems:P This theoretical world would need code monkeys and not engineers
• xgkickt 6y ago
  Because it's going to be a long night debugging the [bleep] build and I just want to eat some of this pizza.
• xx789 6y ago
  I find I have a limit to the number of hours I can code per week. Sometimes I'll spend a weekend on a side project or fixing some bug. When I go back to work the next week I just have trouble being productive. Same if I work late I can get stuff done, but tomorrow's productivity will suck.
• brailsafe 6y ago
  The last time I was employed, almost a year ago, my answer would have been one of the following. 1) I can't concentrate with the sound of this dickhead next to me eating 5 times a day. 2) You keep asking me why my ticket isn't done yet 3) I'm troubleshooting this other problem for a customer that I'm for some reason supposed to do concurrently with my assigned tasks. 4) I'm not interested enough in creating what is ultimately a html/css page, but that has devolved into a complex state management, component architecture, strict typing, and build system monster. 5) Meetings, though the last place was reasonable about them for the most part. If I were to try and answer why I would be coding, the answer would be that the problem is sufficiently complex or new to me, and I have the mental and physical space to tackle it. Every one of the above 5 are constants in most workplaces, and it burns me out to the point where I don't know what compels me to keep seeking jobs.
• xiphias2 6y ago
  i like the comic, but it’s more funny if the time passes in the background :)
• mandragon 6y ago
  Stopped coding in 2018. Gave away my small fortune. Went homeless. My time has come. Aloha.
• adjkant 6y ago
  Actual experience I had recently that could work here: 1. I'm simultaneously filling out performance feedback while supporting infra and a team who is developing said tool. 2. I go to merge code from said team to fix a UI/UX issue of decent urgency. Looks good, builder succeeds, deploy to staging quickly to confirm before going straight to prod. Deployment fails. Odd. Check, odd errors. Turns out JFrog is experiencing an outage and that's a dependency on the builder, keep that status page open, go back to actually filling out performance feedback. 3. Get some unusual flakiness on the performance tool, don't think much of it. 4. See update from JFrog, they are down due to a GCP outage. I go to GCP to see what services are down, and Cloud SQL (the database the performance tool is on) is experiencing issues. In summary, GCP goes down while dealing with a bug in a performance feedback tool that I am both in the middle of using and also assisting with in a non-coding capacity. There's some non-coding for ya :)
• TheDudeMan 6y ago
  Love the comic! Sorry about all the people replying without visiting your comic. For me, it is definitely schedule anxiety. If I have meetings throughout the day (I do), forget it. Why aren't I coding? Because it's the middle of the day. I'll get going at 7-ish. Or tomorrow, when everyone else is taking their kids to the park. Why aren't I coding? I have perf reviews that need to be completed by Wednesday. I HATE PERF REVIEWS! Unable to function. Why aren't I coding? I have to do a presentation next week. I HATE PRESENTATIONS! Running on zero sleep. Unable to function. Why aren't I coding? Because we are hiring. Always. Damn. Hiring. Non. Stop. Interviews. Please make it stop. Why aren't I coding? I already have 4 changes out for review. My git skills aren't good enough to keep stacking these things and keep them straight in my head. I'll rewatch The Expanse while I wait.
• tbirdny 6y ago
  Profectionism procrastination: Because I haven't figured out the best perfect solution that solves all the problems without any trade offs. I'm waiting for the perfect design to occur to me. I'm hoping it might occur to me while working on something else, reading blogs, watching youtube, in the shower, or while I'm sleeping. Or, I'm waiting for inspiration of any kind. Or, I'm waiting for an idea that intrigues me enough, or that I might learn something from, that I think is worth attempting.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• OeE3M8H1DI 6y ago
  most of the things I want to "code" have problems with them I can't solve. I don't have the time or money to solve those problems so why start? I have some potential business ideas/big projects but I can't figure out how to make those things pay for themselves and some of the engineering requires solving problems I don't know can be solved. I can't drop out of my job to start working on them because people rely on the money coming in from my current job which consumes all my time and energy. I could try to raise investor money but as I said, I don't know how to monetize these ideas or at least keep money coming in so no good investor would give me money and I refuse to commit fraud.
• tbirdny 6y ago
  Because I'm updating my work log. Because my employer wants me to keep a log of everything I spend my time on. Or, because I'm updating my ticket statuses. Because my boss wants to see updates in tickets periodically even if there is no progress, so sometimes the udpdate is just "no progress."
• neltnerb 6y ago
  It is probably roughly analogous (I do consulting but not specifically coding), but much of my "down time" truly is "letting the ideas percolate" because properly thinking through what you're planning to do slowly and methodically saves you so much time and frustration in the end. Of course then there are days when I just don't feel like it. I get paid hourly so I don't feel bad about it. I also get paid over twice what is technically the hourly rate of a normal employee. This leads me to think that companies expect employees to spend half their time doing what I do when I'm not billing them -- letting ideas percolate.
• alvarop 6y ago
  Tendonitis :(
• sfinaed 6y ago
  Because I’m having an existential crisis thinking how incapable I am and have been winging it all along. Keep stressing over how long would it be before they find out and kick me out.
  • taxcoder 6y ago
    -> (Accounting, not coding) This, but as the owner. Not fun.
• tisdadd 6y ago
  I was asked to document old code, which someone else had taken over before leaving and removed the framework standards while I was on another project. They renamed every file index.js,and now the cli tools don't work.
• tobmlt 6y ago
  Not late enough yet. I only code productively between the hours of 10 pm and 4 am. If the baby sleeps. Morning coding time is spent fighting with my inner manager about how to present last night’s work at standup. Afternoon coding time is spent in a stupor wondering why the coffee has no effect anymore.
  • ornornor 6y ago
    When do you sleep?
• 8note 6y ago
  Usually im talking or drawing. Sometimes writing. Most of the problems to solve involve multiple teams, and getting timelines and interfaces right takes a fair bit of talking, drawing and writing. Once that's done the coding is quick and simple I'm not paid to code though, coding is incidental to the engineering
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  Currently, I am waiting for inspiration to strike. Sure, I am polishing up some other projects, slowly extending them. You know the drill -- better commentary, testing for more unusual conditions, making the "pipeline" reach further in both directions, that kind of thing. However, I have a Difficult Problem that will require something special to get me going. The last time I was faced with a similar issue (some rather geometric issues, given that it is GIS), I kicked it around for months. One night I was ill and had to take my usual medications for it, and as I became very sleepy, the solutions began to appear to me as well-illustrated diagrams in different colors, with drafting-style callouts and such, a long parade of what I had been looking for. When I woke up, I drew them out and after then, I could begin to code. Everything else I am doing is basically pick and shovel work of coding. For this, though, I await the call from my muse.
• tobmlt 6y ago
  Because M. Navier and Sir Stokes called up their buddies Euler and Kolmogorov... to melt my machine’s brain, ...and my own.
• swayvil 6y ago
  Coding requires prolonged intellectual focus. Prolonged intellectual focus brings insanity. I dislike insanity, from top to bottom. Therefore I no longer code. Not much, anyway.
• AshleighBasil 6y ago
  I'm studying Latin and working with customers instead :D
• jbirer 6y ago
  I am trying to choose which pet project to dwelve in.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ww520 6y ago
  Ehh, was watching Youtude videos on Siggraph animation. One thing led to another, going down the rabbit hole of math videos.
• samatman 6y ago
  Pretty severe bout of executive dysfunction. It's February, it happens. As manifestations of seasonal depression go, it's really not bad, compared to spending a month wishing I wasn't alive. Been keeping up with exercise, eating right for the most part, seeing friends a little. I'll get through it.
• ge96 6y ago
  Mentally spent, in the back of my mind I have this feeling like "why aren't you accomplishing something" but I just literally can't. I can't even watch tv or something I'm just in a bad mood in general today idk what to do, kill time till I fall asleep. Wake up with a fresh brain and then do the hardest thing first. In the end... it is just passing time... I guess I'm lucky I at least have a job that pays... what I build isn't Uber or something you know it's just like a self jerk "look at me I made a todo list" kinda crap.
  • dimator 6y ago
    Don't beat yourself up. This is a video I come back to all the time for inspiration. It's probably the most important youtube video I've seen. I'm hoping it resonates with where you're at. https://youtu.be/N4IfPtl3W_M https://youtu.be/N4IfPtl3W_M
• treeshateorcs 6y ago
  i did, but now i'm depressed and burned out
• KingOfCoders 6y ago
  Meetings.
• p1mrx 6y ago
  I turn happiness into code, but require more minerals.
• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I once worked at a company that, when they did sprint planning, counted a day as 4 hours, that is to say if you said a ticket would take 4 hours you were saying it would take a day. Which means that any 8 hour day was half not coding.
• dimator 6y ago
  My shoulder, shoulder blade, and elbow hurt. Overworked and under exercised. :-/
  • zkirill 6y ago
    Hope you get better buddy.
• RobRivera 6y ago
  working on my Gramdmaster quest in Starcraft 2, and perfecting my yolo reinhardt play. 007 films
• pm90 6y ago
  Writing JIRA tickets, meetings, running SQL queries to prepare reports for X number of reasons, on call operational work to keep our systems running, writing design documents.
• antonvs 6y ago
  > Developers who are being paid to write code You're imposing your own incorrect assumptions about what developers are paid to do.
• alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  When I first started, I thought I would by touch typing code all day long. It was within my first project I realised we were there to solve problems rather than hacking at a keyboard. Since then I’ve learned it’s best to spend more time on a whiteboard or notepad than to jump straight into an editor - measure twice, cut once!
• remulv 6y ago
  My hands have hurt too much, continuously, ever since the operating systems course at Carnegie Mellon in 2008. The doctors claim they can't find anything wrong.
• arendtio 6y ago
  It is funny to read all the comments and see the dichotomy of coding: On the one hand, everybody wants people who can write code and keep them at the highest productivity level and on the other hand, code writers seem to care about not writing too much code, because all that new code must be maintained and might create necessary problems in the future which need to be solved :-D
• phendrenad2 6y ago
  Nothing! Since quitting my job and becoming self-employed, there are now no bosses or coworkers or anything else to stop me from coding (except HN of course!)
• AYBABTME 6y ago
  Busy talking to people, splitting work into issues, writing the issues to put on project boards, finding which project board to use, searching for which issue I'm working on, searching for which project board I put it in, updating project boards, starring at the 150 crap email filling my inbox everyday, writing filtering rules for my inbox, double checking if I didn't miss an important email, looking up unread Slack messages, following up on unanswered questions, getting up to drink some water, getting up to piss that water, taking a break to eat lunch, dropping my daughter to the daycare, picking her up from the daycare, making coffee, ordering coffee beans, reading up documentation, reading code, reviewing PRs, writing code.
• leksak 6y ago
  Burnout
• tjpnz 6y ago
  There are multiple ways of solving a problem and sometimes more code isn't the answer. Taking a few days to properly analyse a problem, examine the existing codebase and weigh up various alternatives is vastly superior to going in guns blazing and creating a giant mess in the process.
• Railworks2 6y ago
  Somewhat simple, I just haven't left my bed yet.
• weggooiaccount 6y ago
  I'm burnt out. I've been on sick leave for over half a year now. Luckily I am in a country where I am protected, but I'm receiving less salary as the law indicates. I'm trying to focus on the good things in life. In my downtime from work I've tried to start a few personal projects, but I just can't seem to stick with it and I end up just playing video games all day. I just wanna crawl into the fetal position and die sometimes. I've often contemplated suicide but I know it's not the way out and it'll hurt the people who love me more than it will help me. I haven't told anyone the last part yet, including my therapist. I know I'll never make that move, but it has been on my mind. I'm working 2 half days a week now, and it's hard. Therapy helps, even if it's just someone I can talk to without judgement, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to stop soon because it's costing me too much. Unfortunately the waiting list for therapy covered by insurance is extremely long. Covid was part of the problem. Because of it, we just got more work and longer hours and I was given some high stress projects and clients that were way beyond my capacity. Couple that with WFH and a bunch of other personal things that happened, I got a burn out. Without going into details, I feel my employer failed to protect me and our relationship has soured. I want to quit and find a new job, but because of my situation I can't just start a new job and work 40 hours again. OTOH continuing where I work now is just causing me more and more stress and anxiety I'm also underpaid for my level, and on top of that I'm only earning 70% because of my sick leave. Rock and a hard place and all that. I'm lucky to have my partner, she tries to be understanding but she's also had a tough year. Anyway, that's why I'm not coding.
  • devoutsalsa 6y ago
    I know this isn't Reddit, but... virtual hugs
  • InitEnabler 6y ago
    Hang in there bud. I kinda have the same thing as well, hobbies have helped a bit with burn out. Glad your at least trying to get help. Again, hang in there.
• ElectricMind 6y ago
  Because Eclipse is so slow and hangs quite often :((
• endymi0n 6y ago
  Because I've realized that for the things I want and need to build, I would be an order of magnitude too slow to go alone. I rarely write any code myself these days (and when I do, I make sure I'm not doing that in any critical path of the company). Barely just enough to stay sharp to remain an effective tiebreaker and stay respected by a highly capable team. Mostly prototypes, tracer bullets, idea scribbles and PoCs. Other than that, I focus mostly on distributing knowledge, connecting the dots and lay the tracks forward to make sure we as a team build something that creates value for the company and doesn't have to be thrown away. Writing more code myself would be a dire waste of company resources.
• damagednoob 6y ago
  Lack of motivation in my team and myself. A big merger has happened which has meant: * various political machinations behind the scenes * the gutting of the team I'm on * the sunsetting of the project I'm on * my contract coming to an end The temptation to just browse reddit, twitter and youtube is one I'm struggling to resist.
• wernercd 6y ago
  "What's stopping you" It's a 3 day weekend?
• huhtenberg 6y ago
  Not being able to find good variable names of the same length.
• byteface 6y ago
  because im vacuuming the db, flushing the cache, rotating the logs, retrieving the stats, rebooting the server, teaching you to change the background in the chat, commenting on the tickets, adding to the docs, onboarding the noobs, upgrading the libraries, adding ips to the firewall, updating the ssl cert, installing, compiling, backing-up, migrating, doing my timesheets, ive got 3 'training modules' i haven't completed yet, 5 invites to a PMs weekly catchup I cant make, I've been asked to review the spec on some other project, still need to setup the VPN access, get passwords for the VNC, need to email support to put my keys on the new server so i can jump host as working remotely, editing crons, editing configs, security updates, replying to client emails... oh and that line of code i wrote this week. sadly I had to write that as there was no other solution. I mean I googled like fuck for ages but this is the only way.
  • byteface 6y ago
    "i thought you said some other guy had done it already on github and all you had to do was tweak it." "na. it didn't work the solution ended up being these 2 solutions on stackoverflow that i copied and pasted together." "you're a genius." "thanks"
• timwis 6y ago
  I love building side projects but I can’t think of anything useful :(
• moonbug 6y ago
  there's already too to much of it.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• moveax 6y ago
  Meetings, most of them without bullet points or a specific topic. I'm coordinating another devs too and that costs less time then meetings to projects. We don't have the best product owner culture, so I need to fill that role too. But we are working on that topic atm and we are reaching the first goals. It's funny and I like it, but sometimes I just block time in my calendar to do tasks two weeks ahead. So nobody is able to schedule me on a meeting without asking before. That makes most people think about if I'm really necessary.
• athosblade 6y ago
  Because it's Saturday and I don't want to code :)
• Darth-Myzis 6y ago
  I feel like I'm just doing it for the greens ya know ? I started programming 'cause when I was a kid, I always wonder how the things I love like games and software that I used to use works. But since then, I found myself in need to earn money to keep life going, and that curiosity and possible passion has to turn a way to live and survive and, I confess, it's starting to lost its bright, there was a long time ago since I code something to myself; but this year I'm planning to change it, I don't want this passion to die and become something bored.
• nmaleki 6y ago
  I code at work and occasionally on quick personal tasks. I consider myself as someone who isn't coding enough. I feel this way because over a year ago I began a project in the hopes of answering a single question. Every day I am looking for information that might help me answer that question. Some people would argue that I should stop trying to answer the question and instead try to test things in code. That the process of coding will help me solve the problem. For this problem, I disagree. There is so much I don't know that sitting down and testing things feels like a waste of time. I refuse to program until I have the structure of the program cemented into my brain. Not every single little detail, just the big picture. When I program, I am chasing an idea. And if I don't fully understand that idea, then programming it becomes so much more difficult.
• fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Isn't there more than enough code already? I'm being paid whether I write code or not, so there is that.
• chrisrickard 6y ago
  Good question! I know ultimately I want my own product. A simple, niche, probably boring, product that myself and my wife can maintain, and ideally - pay for our living expenses. That's the big shiny goal. My agency (of 8 years) was acquired late last year, and I'm currently a little burnt out. I have so many ideas, a smattering of self-doubt, and I think deep down a bit to prove to myself. So at the moment i'm taking a break, and focusing on something a bit left-of-centre (for me at least). I am writing all my experiences of starting and running a software agency up at https://devtoagency.com https://devtoagency.com . It's oddly cathartic, and as somewhen who has never written before I am finding it a mixture of fun, exciting, nerve-wracking and again - sometimes self-doubt inducing. For the first time in my life I am also part of a community (on Twitter). I am conversing, and helping new developers, and it feels good... It's not all about "me", and I think that's what I need this minute. This just turned into a weird self-help exposé ;) TLDR; I am focusing on helping others through writing and community building.
• IamZeroBalance 6y ago
  If I can only send you a meme, answering your question "what it is that's stopping you from coding". Coding is just a part of it.
• p5v 6y ago
  I took a temporary break from leisure-time coding, in order to finish writing my book on drawing algorithmic art with Go: https://leanpub.com/generative-art-in-golang https://leanpub.com/generative-art-in-golang