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I've had a few personal projects where I've spent several hours in the evening working to get it off the ground. What I've found is that my mind is so activated
by hnrodey 6y ago
I've had a few personal projects where I've spent several hours in the evening working to get it off the ground. What I've found is that my mind is so activated/stimulated that I then struggle to even fall asleep as the code is still dancing in my head. It's a real trade-off I have to make - stay up late to begin with to code on something and then another 45-60 mins to even fall asleep.
- globular-toast 6y agoA few times I've had it affect my dreams. I was working on a toy OS a couple of years back. Similar to the OP I would work on it for a couple of hours every night after my girlfriend went home. One time after I was working on virtual memory I had a dream where I was in memory and there pointers and stuff. It was really weird.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoI've definitely had it effect my dreams. But I've also found solutions to bugs by sleeping.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cutemonster 6y agoWas there no invalid pointers and double frees in the dream :-) Maybe waking up was a segfault
- chris_wot 6y agoIt could be worse. Not waking up would be a hard crash.
- cutemonster 6y agoYes, maybe out of memory, accidentally killed process id 1
- anyfoo 6y agoThey're really weird, up to being unpleasant (also had them when working on a toy OS, but once I also had an XML related one; cannot recommend). However, they are downright tortuous if they come as fever dreams (though fever dreams are of course unpleasant no matter what the subject, and are often hard to willingly wake up from, since you're having a fever).
- ehavener 6y agoI’ve been having these weird crossover dreams where I’m in this stressful dialogue with myself about some personal problem in my life — but the dream’s visuals are all just code in an IDE window and I’m desperately debugging it to fix the personal problem. It’s pretty crazy.
- ed_elliott_asc 6y agoGet up an hour before everyone else and work in the morning
- lazyasciiart 6y agoThen the trade-off is getting up an hour before I want to start work so that my mind can start moving.
- sgtnoodle 6y agoThe solution seems obvious. Work completely through the night, then collapse from exhaustion at your convenience! The trick is scoping out your projects appropriately so that you can finish them and catch up on sleep before going completely insane. :-)
- fao_ 6y agoHell, if you do it right, you can watch decades of your life just slip away! amazing!
- jvalencia 6y agoI've done this a couple of times --- thankfully not for decades. But it's remarkable how much being a code monkey is timeless. You look up and months have passed.
- nullserver 6y agoDid that for several years. Basically a 36 hour schedule. Was awesome. Having a family put a stop to that.
- jkestner 6y agoMy imposter syndrome is lessened by reading this and so many other comments that feel familiar. (Unless I'm up so late because I'm not 10x? Oh no.)
- Traubenfuchs 6y agoAhhhh -bad times, when I was still programming for „fun“. Turned me into a „thinking in code“ zombie that had trouble dealing with people. Really turned my autism dial to max.
- rubyfan 6y agoThis. I used to spend 8+ hours a day coding (yes really) for work then ‘fun’. I often had a hard time around people in real life. It was like my nerves were on high gear and I was awkward and didn’t know when to engage the speech portion of my brain for normal conversation as if I was some observer. After not coding for a decade it’s much better. I can carry a conversation, especially after a beer.
- thisisnotabot 6y agoOh wow that really hits home. What did you switch into? Less technical role or left Software/tech altogether?
- rubyfan 6y agoSlow migration that just happened over time. I took an architect role that required technical knowledge but about 0% coding. Initially I was disappointed about that but went with it. Eventually I took a pure business role. Along the way I got better with people, still a bit of an introvert but able to fake my way through to an executive role. Every once in a while I’ll try to code something. I’m able to get by if I want. I get bored with it quick though and it doesn’t bring me the same kind of flow buzz mental stimulation it used to. I’ve gotta say though, the modern web wtf happened?
- vagrantJin 6y agoReact and JSX happened.
- hokumguru 6y agoInteresting use of quotations, any reason?
- koyote 6y agoI have the same issue. If a personal project is fun, I might end up trying to 'just fix this one issue; just polish up this one feature' all the way up to bedtime. This will invariably affect my sleep with either no sleep at all for 1-2 hours or dreams of fixing an issue over and over again resulting in me being less rested the next day. I'd love for there to be a quick way to 'snap' out of programming mode but after over a decade of programming I haven't really found one (except for having a couple of pints...).
- jonfromsf 6y agoThe dreaming of fixing an issue is funny. You can take advantage of that by stopping when you are stuck. A lot of times your brain will cook up a fix during the night and it will be waiting for you in the morning! I haven't noticed that this makes the sleep less restful either.
- dfee 6y agoYou’re right that often times works, but I’ve backtracked on that - to the extent I’ll actively try and dream about something else - an island perhaps. I’ve come to terms that, for me, hacking into the night, dreaming about solutions, then waking up and implementing them... is manic and deeply unhealthy.
- whoisstan 6y agoGetting on the bicycle and cruise around does the same thing for me. Without thinking about the problem directly, ideas pop into my mind.
- bambataa 6y agoI find the surface level of my programming dreams are exceptionally dull (`var a = b + c` for what feels like hours) but yes sometimes a solution to a problem occurs to me early the next day.
- jwdunne 6y agoThat’s my number one problem solving strategy. 1. Batter my brain 2. Do something else 3. Sleep on it 4. Aha moment I do it so often, I just say to colleagues that “It’s stewing in the back of my head for a bit” or “Need to sleep on it”. Before I was fully aware of it, I’d get super disheartened, sleep on it, then come in the next day and nail it by 10. That’s another thing: if something becomes comical, there’s usually a pattern. If it’s the positive kind of comical, repeat the pattern. If negative, consciously avoid (but that appears comically harder).
- xwolfi 6y agoThe most difficult is when it s your day work code. I m in a phase where the code at work interests me so much that I think I sleep 5 hours a day, the rest I touch that code. Non stop, and I have a kid. Thank god it s usually just a phase :D
- enobrev 6y agoI've put a huge emphasis on sleep in the past year, as someone who used to sleep about 4 hours a night. I've found that giving myself a solid hour to wind down helps immensely with slowing my brain down and letting me sleep more peacefully. Sometimes I read, or listen to music, or watch youtube, or have a beer or an edible and just hang with out, or just tidy the house or something. Whatever it is, it's not work, it's not in my office, and it's not hard. I've found I've been sleeping far better because of it. Even on nights that I work super late on some head scratcher, with a full 12-15 hours at my desk, I still give myself the hour before going to bed.
- anyfoo 6y agoThis is how I do it, too. I allocate at least an hour to YouTube (in bed, using my iPad), with the not-super-strict rule to look at content that does not stimulate my mind. Videos about games, or restoration of old computers, are okay for bedtime, videos about e.g. DSP are not. If my mind is really stimulated, this may feel a bit awkward initially, forcing my mind to "calm down and focus on the video", but at the end of the hour it's usually fine. And then do not start thinking about a related problem again when you shut the iPad off. I made that mistake so many times.
- ekvilibrist 6y agoYou've probably heard this but the science says you'll "condition" your mind to sleep better if you associate the bed with just sleeping (and possibly that other thing). But try not to read, watch videos etc for extended periods of time in bed, and you will get naturally wind down and fall into "sleep mode" once you get in bed.
- lallysingh 6y agoI've started a brain dump prizes at night on a remarkable tablet. It lets me let go of things until three next day.
- girvo 6y agoI do the same with my Boox Note 2, sometimes followed by reading a book on it (with the blue coloured backlight off and only the warm orange one on, it doesn’t annoy my partner with the lights off)
- bigiain 6y agoFor me there's a big difference in mental state between "getting it off the ground" and "working on little bug fixes or PRs". "Getting off the ground" is for me, a great big open-ended architectural decision making process with an ocean of second-guessing myself. It's very very likely to keep me awake for hours reevaluating everything I did in that last couple of hours. Smaller pieces of work are different. Actually fixing a bug has a fairly well defined "ending" and I can sleep easy basking in the warm glow of satisfaction. Even getting part way through implementing a feature is a thing that doesn't put my brain into "wide open exploration of all possibilities" mode. It's maybe not so easy to bask in achievement and sleep as a quick bug fix, but at least the "code dancing in my head" is a fairly narrow path of implementation I've probably already got the structural problems solved for. For me - starting projects need empty weekends.
- meheleventyone 6y agoI get this even with work projects and design ideas. I have to really work to switch off and not think about things.
- bemmu 6y agoReading in bed is a good transition from active thinking. The book has to be something that strikes a balance between not too exciting, but not unreadably boring.
- xtiansimon 6y agoFlip side is when you sleep like a rock, because you can’t get started. My project stalled for the winter months. Now I’ve forsaken television (in favor of a book) just so I can get a 30 minutes to two hours of code time.
- raffraffraff 6y agoYou could try flipping over to reading a book about Kubernetes. I dare you to stay awake more than 10 minutes.