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Write code every day
- tectonic 11y agoAlways Be Coding.
- tessierashpool 11y agoPut that coffee down.
- shogun21 11y agoCoffee's for coders... So actually we can pick it up again.
- reagency 11y ago"Reference"-style humor is not upvoted on HN, since the audience lacks the common context, and the site doesn't provide a way to hide minor comments for those looking for major comments, which makes them expensive to readers.
- xacaxulu 11y agoWhat about those steak knives?
- orthoganol 11y agoLol, that article when it came out was incredible. The author somehow failed to realize that "ABC", from Alec Baldwin's psychopathic character, is actually satire about the mindset of such psychopaths, not actual advice to live by.
- tectonic 11y ago:)
- current_call 11y agoHow do you know it's satire?
- orthoganol 11y agoGeneral literary sense. Have you read the play?
- current_call 11y agoThat's vague. I'm not entitled to a thorough explanation, but I was hoping for a better one. I have not read the play, seen the play, or seen the movie.
- orthoganol 11y agoIt's similar to asking why I think Malfoy in Harry Potter is portrayed as a bad person. There's nothing subtle about the GGR character. I recommend watching the movie, primarily for the performances.
- current_call 11y agoI've seen the speech. He isn't nice, but he's still right. "Do a good job or be replaced by someone who can." I guess I need to add the movie to my backlog now.
- teddyh 11y agoSome would disagree: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-yo... My opinion is that both viewpoints have merit, and it is very dangerous to embrace one and dismiss the other.
- throwaway12309 11y agoActually, spend time with your kids every day. Or your special one. Or kitesurfing. Or playing pool. Or just learn about chess and play folks in the park. Do other things and let your mind expand and bring those benefits to your code. It will make you a better coder (and person) and life will actually be interesting.
- dominotw 11y agowhat? How did you come to those conclusions ?
- veb 11y agoI think his point is quite obvious, which is basically "don't forget there's a life outside of the tech world". I know that I'll sit here doing nothing on the Internet when I'm not constructive yet the hours still fly on by. Realistically, I should realise when things won't get better, get up, go for a walk or play with my son. On the off chance I've done this in the past, I always feel more refreshed and can turn a previously crappy day into something positive. But sitting on your chair, punishing yourself because you don't know what to do/code, isn't very effective in bettering yourself. I hope that's what OPs point was. :)
- brettlangdon 11y agoI totally agree with this. And is actually a really good point I missed in my article. You cannot, and should not, force yourself to sit in front of the computer non-stop just because you "should". You need to take those breaks too, they are just as important as the work you put towards mastering your craft.
- davelnewton 11y agoEvery cognitive study ever?
- Nickersf 11y agoI agree with this if you code at work, or in school. For someone trying to pick up coding as a hobby or potential new career coding daily could really help solidify skills.
- chipz 11y ago[do something here] every day is the key to master everything.
- sutest 11y agoagreed
- veb 11y agoFor each new tab/window, I've got this site set as default: http://finishonethingtoday.com http://finishonethingtoday.com It helps. Just one little thing, doesn't need to be big. Just something.
- melling 11y agoYes, the 10,000 hour rule. Except that's wrong...
- shogun21 11y agoHow is it wrong?
- melling 11y agoAre you asking me to Google that for you? I just got downvoted for simply pointing out that they're wrong.
- mcbutterbunz 11y agoNo, he's asking you to back up your claim. If you're going to make a statement like that, you should be prepared to provide some information. Dont make others do the research.
- melling 11y agoHere: https://www.google.com/#q=10000+hour+rule+wrong https://www.google.com/#q=10000+hour+rule+wrong The first couple of results are great. However, if you really are interested, I would look through Google's entire first results page.
- _RPM 11y agoAnd tell people who judge you for drinking too much coffee to kindly go f* themselves
- meowface 11y agoOff-topic, but why did you decide not to go with YAML? Did you just want a version of YAML that wasn't whitespace-significant? Forge just looks like an nginx-y YAML, with no arrays and `=` instead of `:`.
- brettlangdon 11y agoWas mostly just how it turned out. A lot of the decisions were mostly arbitrary, I wanted something that look/felt like an nginx config but was more generic (didn't have application specific directives), it just so happened to end up looking a lot like yaml. '=' was arbitrary, I think paired with ';' I was going for a programming language type feel, which might not of been the best decision, but it is what I did. I also have plans to add more features, there currently are references (pointers essentially), intend on adding list/sets, operators (merge/concatenation/substraction/union/intersection/etc) and being able to reference environment variables. Not sure what else is to come. Also, side note, I found writer a parser that deals with brackets '{}' to define blocks was much easier than trying to do it via whitespace. So that decision was mostly a time based decision. I wrote an article about the project here: https://brett.is/writing/about/forge-configuration-parser/ https://brett.is/writing/about/forge-configuration-parser/ It doesn't give any good details into why I made the decisions I did, just a quick overview.
- copsarebastards 11y ago> More times than not the above exercise leads me to a problem that I then can go off and solve. For example, a few weeks ago I sat down and decided I wanted to write a web server in go (think nginx/apache). I knew going into the project I wanted a really nice and easy to use configuration file to define the settings. So, I did what most people do these days I and used json, but that didn’t really feel right to me. I then tried yaml, but yet again didn’t feel like what I wanted. I probably could have used ini format and made custom rules for the keys and values, but again, this is hacky. This spawned a new project in order to solve the problem I was having and ended up being forge, which is a hand coded configuration file syntax and parser for go which ended up being a neat mix between json and nginx configuration file syntax. You make a persuasive argument for why someone should not write code every day, but instead step away from the keyboard occasionally and get a sense of perspective. No, your mix between json and nginx configuration file syntax is not "neat". It's pointless, and doesn't solve any real problem. In fact, if anyone ever uses your idea it will cause problems, by adding another random pointless format for the rest of us to have to support. And did you miss the beginning of what you said? You set off to write a web server and instead you got bogged down in parsing the config files. Your efforts did not produce a web server. Writing code every day has apparently not taught you how to focus. In short, quantity of code does not beget quality. Quality code isn't just code that's nicely formatted, clear, terse, etc., it's also code that solves a real problem that you've set out to solve. And just writing more code isn't going to help you learn what a real problem is, let alone how to solve it.
- furyofantares 11y agoThe goal, as stated, was to have the experience of writing code. Bringing another web server into existence was not the goal, it was a potential means to the goal.
- hoers 11y agoWhy not set the goal to 'make something that works'? You'd get the whole 'experience of writing code' with it for free
- davelnewton 11y agoNo no, don't. Athletes don't practice every day, they rest. The brain needs rest, just like the body. Take some down time. Come back refreshed. Practice deliberately.
- onion2k 11y agoOn the face of it your advice sounds sensible, but is it actually possible? Can you rest your brain? You can do things that feel like they're less effort mentally but your brain is still doing just as much work - things that feel nicer are just releasing a different combination of dopamine and serotonin. Is there actually any difference in the amount of energy you use doing "down time" activities? What mechanism is your brain using to recover?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ggreer 11y agoI'm sorry, but your comment is doubly-wrong. First, most athletes do train every day. Even tapering before an important competition involves training daily. I ran track and XC competitively in high school and college. Some of my teammates hadn't missed a day in years. Most of us only skipped training if we were injured or very ill. Second, the brain is not a muscle. Sleep deprivation and stress hormones can diminish its abilities, but no amount of thinking or drudgery can damage it. Neurons can't tell if they're reading, playing video games, or debugging code. An examination of history also supports this. A mere century ago, people toiled far greater for far longer than we do today. The average work week was over 60 hours![1] Despite such exertions, even the concept of burnout didn't exist. It still doesn't exist in some cultures, and in the cultures it does, burnout doesn't affect everyone. Unlike sleep deprivation or physical exhaustion, some people just don't burn out. If you start looking at studies, you'll find papers like, Is burnout separable from depression in cluster analysis? A longitudinal study.[2] The answer: no. So far, researchers haven't been able to reliably differentiate between burnout and depression. This indicates that burnout is depression, not a guaranteed consequence of working. Of course, one should still be wary of depression, and work is one piece of that puzzle. Yet work alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause ruin. Exercise, social gatherings, and friendships are equally (if not more) important. As one more piece of evidence that work alone doesn't cause burnout, I submit myself. I have written code every day for the past 908 days.[3] That's almost 8% of my existence. Those commits aren't just whitespace or linter changes. Every day, I write real code that runs in production. I also exercise, socialize, and generally live a fulfilling life. People sometimes voice their concerns about burnout. But to me, it's as if they'd asked, "Are you worried about getting burnt out from reading so much Hacker News?" 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_in_working_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_... 2. http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_20press_29.pdf http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_... 3. http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png
- quii 11y agoWhile I appreciate the sentiment when you set your goal as coding every day, that becomes your hammer to solve every problem. The best example of this is your confguration project. I am amazed how many well-intentioned projects there are to do with configuration when really all you need is environment variables. No libraries, works everywhere, with every language and easy to understand. http://12factor.net/ http://12factor.net/
- xacaxulu 11y agoWork at Wal-Mart every day. Fix cars every day. Perform brain surgery every day. Fly passenger jets every day. Flip burgers every day. Hmmm. Doesn't really seem like a great idea.
- Adlai 11y ago"Hey hey hey..." yep, that one doesn't quite work either. "Do you want to know the secret of life? [I'll] tell you the secret of life: it's not the amount of time we have... it's not quantity and it's not even quality. It's variety." - Bardo the Just, Neverness (by David Zindell)
- anoplus 11y agoFor me the whole point of technology is to free us. I want to write code that solves a real problem. 90% of my time is spent thinking about what problem to solve.
- lewisjoe 11y agoI see a lot of negative comments here. The point being missed is doing something is better than doing nothing. Yes he might not have ended up finishing with the web server what he started. But I'm pretty sure he did NOT set out to build something that would be a product or a startup someday. He set out to do something repeatedly, so that he becomes good at it and uncover new problems that are interesting to keep working on. None of this relates to productivity or writing the best code possible. You start out with something; end up finding pleasure in doing something else; then you keep on doing it until you've written enough code to know where you stand and keep improving. The take away for me is this. As for me it always was the chicken to the egg problem. I need to be keep working to find new problems. However, I need to start somewhere with a problem that I don't know yet. Trying to rewrite existing stuff was something I'd do to learn new tech. Now it hits me that I could use the same, to keep my fingers stuck to the keys. I'd love to read more writes like this. Sharing how you overcame something is noble. It helps more people than you anticipate.
- brettlangdon 11y agoThank you. This does a great job of summing up the article. It was exactly what I hoped people would take away from it.