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> You know what's more awesome than spending my Saturday afternoon learning Haskell by hacking away at a few Project Euler problems? Fuck, ANYTHING. I feel ext

by sjs 17y ago

> You know what's more awesome than spending my Saturday afternoon learning Haskell by hacking away at a few Project Euler problems? Fuck, ANYTHING. I feel extremely lucky to not only have known what I wanted to do from a young age, but enjoy it, and can make good money doing it. I like to ride my bike, hike, climb mountains, go to the beach, and walk my dog as well as solve problems, math or otherwise. I really hope for Ted's sake that he enjoys development at least a little bit. No one wants to work with people that aren't happy.

philfreo 17y ago
I worked with Ted at Google. Trust me, even though his articles have a certain sarcastic tone to them, he was definitely enjoyable to work with and clearly did like solving hard problems in development. His point in this post is that you can do a great job at work but then enjoy your life outside of work.
- _pius 17y ago
  His point in this post is that you can do a great job at work but then enjoy your life outside of work. Is doing a little coding outside of work mutually exclusive to enjoying your life? I feel like the article draws a false dichotomy that either you have a life and don't code at all outside of work or you spend all of your non-work time coding.
  - thenduks 17y ago
    That's my biggest gripe here, too. Why are people so black-and-white about this? I work 40-60 hours/week depending on what's going on. Sometimes while working 40 hour weeks I don't write any code at home preferring to do one of the many other thing I enjoy. Other times I'm practically buried in work and come home and poke around on a side project. This just varies depending on my mood and what (if any) interesting stuff has my attention. If you enjoy something, you'll find time. If you don't enjoy it, why is it your career again? If you ask me the whole point of this discussion shouldn't be 'coding at home' but instead 'giving a crap'. Even just a little passion for your field will get you a long way in any profession - and I think that is especially true in creative fields like programming. Here I am on a Saturday afternoon putting some thinking time into my field... have I devoted the day to it? Hardly! You're right on that there's absolutely nothing mutually exclusive about enjoying coding (and lots of other completely unrelated stuff) as a hobby and as a career.
  - nfnaaron 17y ago
    The point to be taken, whether the article states it or not, is that you can choose to code outside work, or you can choose to not code outside work, and neither choice is mutually exclusive to enjoying your life or being good at your work. How much your work life and your after work life resemble each other is entirely up to you. People who judge you based on that (in either direction) are to be avoided.
rw140 17y ago
I suspect he does enjoy development. Just doesn't want to do it all day, every day. He writes in terms of 'enjoying solving hard problems'. If we can assume that's his motivation then 1) as long as his work includes hard problems he'll probably enjoy it and 2) being only allowed to work on the hard problems contained in the field of computing would be counter-productive.

by sjs 17y ago

philfreo 17y ago

I worked with Ted at Google. Trust me, even though his articles have a certain sarcastic tone to them, he was definitely enjoyable to work with and clearly did like solving hard problems in development. His point in this post is that you can do a great job at work but then enjoy your life outside of work.

_pius 17y ago
His point in this post is that you can do a great job at work but then enjoy your life outside of work. Is doing a little coding outside of work mutually exclusive to enjoying your life? I feel like the article draws a false dichotomy that either you have a life and don't code at all outside of work or you spend all of your non-work time coding.
- thenduks 17y ago
  That's my biggest gripe here, too. Why are people so black-and-white about this? I work 40-60 hours/week depending on what's going on. Sometimes while working 40 hour weeks I don't write any code at home preferring to do one of the many other thing I enjoy. Other times I'm practically buried in work and come home and poke around on a side project. This just varies depending on my mood and what (if any) interesting stuff has my attention. If you enjoy something, you'll find time. If you don't enjoy it, why is it your career again? If you ask me the whole point of this discussion shouldn't be 'coding at home' but instead 'giving a crap'. Even just a little passion for your field will get you a long way in any profession - and I think that is especially true in creative fields like programming. Here I am on a Saturday afternoon putting some thinking time into my field... have I devoted the day to it? Hardly! You're right on that there's absolutely nothing mutually exclusive about enjoying coding (and lots of other completely unrelated stuff) as a hobby and as a career.
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  The point to be taken, whether the article states it or not, is that you can choose to code outside work, or you can choose to not code outside work, and neither choice is mutually exclusive to enjoying your life or being good at your work. How much your work life and your after work life resemble each other is entirely up to you. People who judge you based on that (in either direction) are to be avoided.

rw140 17y ago

I suspect he does enjoy development. Just doesn't want to do it all day, every day. He writes in terms of 'enjoying solving hard problems'. If we can assume that's his motivation then 1) as long as his work includes hard problems he'll probably enjoy it and 2) being only allowed to work on the hard problems contained in the field of computing would be counter-productive.