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Quitting my 9-to-5 to travel around SE Asia was the best move I ever made. Not only have I had countless irreplaceable experiences but my code has improved more
by cageface 15y ago
Quitting my 9-to-5 to travel around SE Asia was the best move I ever made. Not only have I had countless irreplaceable experiences but my code has improved more in the last six months than in the previous five years combined.
- endlessvoid94 15y agowhy has your code improved?
- fragsworth 15y agoNew experiences probably have some effect on your ability to think abstractly. I've heard similar anecdotes of people improving various skills due to traveling.
- sliverstorm 15y agoAlternatively, being forced to get away from the console may have helped get him past coder's block in his development.
- cageface 15y agoMy old job consisted mostly of maintaining and adding minor tweaks to mature codebases. Working on my own projects has given me a chance to do clean-slate architecture again. The things I've been working on (machine learning, DSP and OpenGL) are a lot more interesting and challenging than the corporate CRUD apps I was working on too. I have to be ruthlessly efficient with my time now that I can't count on a salary, so I've gotten a lot better at focusing on getting features done fast. Travel itself is somewhat incidental to all this, but it's given me a tremendous incentive to make this experiment work because I want to keep traveling. Exposure to new cultures has also given me some ideas for new projects and given me a lot of aesthetic inspiration.