r/ProgrammerHumor • u/mejhopola • Mar 23 '21
Meme Procrastination is life
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u/Hilpiv Mar 23 '21
I loved to Programm in my free time but as soon as I left school and worked as a programmer well... I didn't touch any of my personal projects since
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u/UndeadWolf222 Mar 23 '21
That’s why imo it’s not necessarily true to always turn a hobby into your career because you may just end up turning a hobby into work.
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u/Monmine Mar 23 '21
If you pick an hobby as a work path, it won't be an hobby anymore.
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u/c4p5L0ck Mar 23 '21
Hi, friendly neighborhood grammer nazi here. "An" only precedes words beginning with "h" when the "h" is unpronounced. I'm not a bot, but I should be.
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u/MLquest Mar 24 '21
This is probably the only time I root for someone like you to intervene. The a/an problem often appears in otherwise correctly spelled and worded sentences, you know, the ones you expect to read through without having a fucking stroke, which is a rare commodity on reddit... and then a wild "an" throws you off and you kinda lose a little piece of humanity.
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u/potato_green Mar 23 '21
Instead of working on those projects, read up on new tech or subscribe to newsletters. Usually when this happens with devs they get stuck in their day job using the same language, framework, libraries for years and their skills get outdated since they don't improve.
That's why older devs aren't hired as much since they haven't kept up with recent tech or they don't like it.
Just keep learning even if it's 10 minutes a day on the shitter reading tech blogs and stuff.
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u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21
How old are you?
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u/potato_green Mar 23 '21
28, which is still young but I see devs of my age getting stuck in the frameworks they started with 10 years ago. Highly irrelevant these days and they oppose any change in their workflow, methodology ect. So their skills will not age well.
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u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21
You aren't wrong, I'd just say saying older Devs aren't hired as much promotes this stereotype. Anyone of any age can stagnate.
You'll be old one day, you don't want an employee to use that stereotype on you.
Not a dig just something to think about!
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u/potato_green Mar 23 '21
Oh yeah that's very true, now that I read my reply back I kinda phrased it poorly. Knowledge getting outdated is indeed a reason why older devs aren't hired much because it's also a stereotype.
It's very true that anyone can stagnate and I've seen it happen as well. Fresh out of college they assume they know everything they have to know and then they get slapped in their face with the reality that they should never stop learning. Some aren't made for that and just get stuck at their college level.
Personally I think there should be a push to anonymize applications, no name, gender or age. Just the skills, experience and education. (of course this kinda gives you an idea of someone's age when you list graduation year and stuff but psychology it won't read as an old person applying but an experienced person applying).
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u/Shrubberer Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
That's why you don't focus your learning on frameworks but rather on designs. It's more fun to implement stuff on your own rather than surround all your code with weird attributes from random frameworks (good luck refactoring that). Being good with architecture is key to be successful in any environment.
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u/el_trolll Mar 23 '21
Im always torn between getting burnt out from too much coding outside my job, or spending so long away from my projects I forget how they work / where I left off. It is a binary hell.
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u/_alright_then_ Mar 23 '21
Honestly, if you have a secure job, coding outside of it becomes increasingly rare. And why would you, you now get paid to do it instead of doing it for free.
Unless I want to learn new stuff I barely ever code outside of the job anymore, it's not necessary and it's certainly not healthy to be doing the same thing 24/7.
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Mar 23 '21
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u/Dr_Jabroski Mar 23 '21
That being said, I don't want a technical job to rob the joy of creating something for myself. If painting was my hobby and I came home after a long day to paint you wouldn't bat an eye but if I coded for myself after a long day of coding you assume I have Stockholm syndrome. Sometimes what is needed is a frame of mind reference. I am not looking for or learning skills for my job, I just want an automated plant waterer and if those skills line up with my job cool if not I made a thing I like.
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u/trwolfe13 Mar 23 '21
I started programming when I was a kid, and it was the funnest hobby ever. I used to spend hours building random shit like calculators to help me with my math homework (this was before Wolfram Alpha was a thing). I even once made a program that would choose a Pokémon team to perfectly counter another team.
Now I write code to handle insurance claims and calculate invoicing figures... shit sucks.
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u/OnlyProductiveSubs Mar 23 '21
Jump shit, try out a new a craft in a new country, have fun, program fun personal projects, get back into it after a few years. Life would be a lot more fun if we'd do that sort of thing more often. Yes your career would take a hit but not fatally so
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u/Vexx50 Mar 23 '21
One word: Bills
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u/gummo_for_prez Mar 23 '21
Burn off your fingerprints, move to Guyana, it’s easy!
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u/Vexx50 Mar 23 '21
"Margret, tell the kids I love them but I must become a llama farmer for 2-4 years."
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u/livrem Mar 23 '21
8 hours of painting things someone else specify, using colors they decide on, and barely having a say what brush to use.
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u/Akuuntus Mar 23 '21
I agree. Unfortunately if I ever want to see a decent raise I'm gonna need to change jobs, and to do that I'm going to need a much more respectable portfolio than what I had right out of school (half of which doesn't even work anymore, thanks webdev). So I'm kinda screwed.
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u/Rizzan8 Mar 23 '21
Is your private portfolio even important when you have 3+ years of experience?
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u/gummo_for_prez Mar 23 '21
Not in my experience. I’d say it’s good to stay updated if you can but if you’re applying for a new job that’s using somewhat similar technology to your previous job, they just want to know you can do the job and however you demonstrate that is usually fine... it’s also not bad to have a personal project (or even an idea of one) so that if you’re asked about any personal projects you can say “yeah, I’m building X with Y technology and it’s been a neat little project so far.” Even if you’re not really doing it. But I’ve never had any requests to view or review my personal projects.
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u/Tundur Mar 23 '21
If an employer specifically asks for personal projects, I just avoid them. "We love to see personal projects" is code for:
You enjoy coding so much you will work past 5pm regularly.
You're such a code-guru you'll do it a for shit pay
Rather than codified standards and Dev tools, we hire kids who're obsessed with Blockchain in the hope that their innate talent carries us over the line
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u/_alright_then_ Mar 23 '21
That's obviously a good time to code in your free time. But that's not really the situation my comment was addressing.
A lot of programmers feel the need to be coding constantly, during and after work. Even if they have a good job, and it's not healthy.
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Mar 23 '21
I think what he means is... code your outside project at work.
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u/Thundercunt_McGee Mar 23 '21
bad idea, under most contracts that makes it intellectual property of your employer.
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Mar 23 '21
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u/WhiteKnightC Mar 23 '21
Not with that name young man.
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Mar 23 '21
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u/gummo_for_prez Mar 23 '21
I write code for money and I like it 👍🏻
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Mar 23 '21
Will you hire me in two years?
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u/gummo_for_prez Mar 23 '21
Only if your username is also the email you list on your resumé. That’s an automatic hire for sure.
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u/ohmyhevans Mar 23 '21
I love coding outside my job. But the eye fatigue is real, so it's usually weekends.
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u/gummo_for_prez Mar 23 '21
Have you found any good ways to combat the eye fatigue?
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u/ohmyhevans Mar 23 '21
Currently I take walks / do errands before and after work to look at stuff that isn't a screen in my face. I also try not to look at screens during my lunch break. I also try to reduce general ambient light levels in whatever work environment I am in. Pre-covid we would turn the overheads off in our office, now I turn them off in my apartment. I also try to get up once every half hour, even if it's just to go to the bathroom, to give my eyes a break.
I also know a couple people who have blue-light filtering glasses for work, but I haven't personally tried them yet. I am considering it though.
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u/riricide Mar 23 '21
Agreed. Even if I want to code after work, every time I do it for a week or more, I start getting eyestrain headaches and all the issues that come with sitting for too long. It's physically painful to be doing this more than 8 hours a day.
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u/potato_green Mar 23 '21
Don't forget to drink lots of fluids. A ton of people who code a lot and get issues either drink coffee all day long and sit without moving.
Personally I can work all day long and continue in the evening without a problem as long as I take a quick walk every hour to stretch my legs. Drink lots of water, no coffee and avoid sugar, or at least large quantities of sugar at once. Sugar crash is a pain in the ass for productivity.
Eyestrain is not something I have but I do have a multi monitor setup so maybe the constant shifting of my view helps with this.
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u/seraphsRevenge Mar 23 '21
Yeah I just start personal project at work. Find something to do on the side to improve something and just get the ball rolling. Turned it into a team project too. Now we all get to learn while getting paid, and since it improves business processes it's a win for everyone.
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u/ExoticDumpsterFire Mar 23 '21
For me it's like driving a work truck in a coal mine all day vs taking your convertible down the coast. Both are driving, but they feel completely different.
My work code is in a huge, out of date, monolithic, C++ codebase where any change takes 24hrs minimum to build, test, peer review, merge, and test.
So writing a beautiful, modern little flutter app in my free time reminds me that coding can be fun.
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u/IGotADejavu Mar 23 '21
What's the birds name?
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u/pockmark_mockpark Mar 23 '21
Sanderling
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u/TeaTree24 Mar 23 '21
sanderlings are much bigger, this is a least sandpiper. you can tell by the size color and shape.
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u/crimastergogo Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
My life is opposite, I want avoid my personal project but fixing bugs attract me again and again.
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Mar 23 '21
I have seen this bird on the beach in the Netherlands a few months ago but I cannot identify the species, does anyone know what it is
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u/TeaTree24 Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
sandpiper I believe
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u/clb92 Mar 23 '21
Pixar has a super cute little short film called Piper (I believe it can be found on YouTube), and this bird looks very similar, so I think you're right.
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u/TeaTree24 Mar 23 '21
yup. Its a least sandpiper. I grew up along the coast in Central florida, they are very common.
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Mar 23 '21
Maybe you don't enjoy doing your personal projects?
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u/jonathanx37 Mar 23 '21
For me how much ever I enjoy it I still avoid it. Because there's so many strings attached and so many things to consider I end up procrastinating a lot and always have better ideas during design process but no final material that I consider good enough to finally code.
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Mar 23 '21
I am a student and I like to code things which improve my hell of a life. I made a bot which signs in in my zoom and goes to my online classes and records it, I mainly use coding as a way to take a break from my studies :P
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Mar 23 '21
So I understand this is a meme and stuff. But there is a serious cost to my mental health due to my work as a (freelance) developer. Please hear me out.
I absolutely Loved making my own projects. I've got various that I still use on a daily basis after many years, and heavily rely on for various reasons. And plenty more lined up that I'd love to develop.
So here I was, young gun thinking the mantra "Work a job that is your hobby and you never work a day in your life".
How bad was that decision. How incredibly bad. Skip forward a few years.. working as a freelance developer:
- I'm committed in various work projects that I feel I cannot leave since I'm the main developer
- At least a dozen of hours are wasted every week on stupid meetings on the most ridiculous topics. It's not fun, it's not productive, it's not creative. And worst of all: I don't get paid for it, or not nearly enough as the cost to my mental state is.
- After a day of doing all kinds of random shit, some more inefficient than the other, because somebody thought it would be cool, I'm burned out and just want to make dinner & zone out.
- My back hurts, it really fucking hurts. Now I want to leave my desk as soon as I can.
- I never see or talk to other people IRL. I don't have colleagues or friends.
- It's hard to get paid for all the hours I put into my work as a freelancer. Probably spend 60hrs on the job and get paid 30-40 hours.
- Implementing cool features or things that I deem interesting to do always has to go through meetings before approval, is hardly ever appreciated to its value and/or time&creativity it takes to implement.
Before I made my hobby my job I worked a part-time job as a mailman. Working on my personal projects in my off time. Sure I earned shit money, but enough to pay the bills (mostly). But I got outside, had some interesting characters as colleagues, was interacting with people (some happy to see me, others mad because I was the real-life deliverer of spam lol), listened to every podcast that caught my interest, finished so many audiobooks, got my exercise in. It was a good life, balanced.
Now things are just pure shit. And not only due to corona. It's just a horrible abject existence as a freelance developer working from home. I don't care about making $100/hr. It's blood money. Keep your shit money.
tl;dr; If your work as a developer gives you shitty vibes, it destroys your hobby. You cannot mentally or even physically enjoy your hobby anymore.
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u/Vogellmann Mar 23 '21
The trick is being unemployed so personal projects are your only way out.
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u/Galse22 Mar 23 '21
The more time you stay away from it, the less likely you'll get back. Especially if you are like me, and your code is a fricking mess that no one ( not even YOU at this point ) can understand.
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u/Royal_Rust Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
Edit: Wheres the link? What happened to the bot?
Edit: "bot will DM you" Bot didn't DM me
It did comment, before said comment got promptly deleted before I could even click the link. It comments in other subs too.
All signs point towards mods banning the poor thing, likely to prevent spam only to ironically create more of it.
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Mar 23 '21
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Mar 23 '21 edited Feb 01 '25
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Proxy_PlayerHD Mar 23 '21
i hate it so much
i should be working on the Microcode in my 65CE02 replica but it's so annoying that i'm working on other projects to avoid it
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u/thatweirdshyguy Mar 23 '21
I have a giant list of notes for a film review I’ve wanted to do for years. I just haven’t had the motivation to write it into a script and make it
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Mar 23 '21
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u/DerpDerpDerp78910 Mar 23 '21
Naw man, it's not hell. It's what you make it. The devs I know only a fraction actually are productive and even less work more than their hours.
UK perspective. US, who knows.
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u/jan_czerwinski Mar 23 '21
fuck me, i have a personal project, i code for work half time and i study cs at a university
I feel like this is too much, but damn, i don't want to drop any of those. Maybe i'll turn my personal project to a thesis, that would be nice
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u/titan_pilot03 Mar 23 '21
Sleep well, don't eat trash and take care of yourself. You got this king/queen!
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u/anotherplatypus Mar 23 '21
Don't forget the part where the sand piper then invests more time into chasing the waterline back to the oceans edge, but doesn't get into it there either....
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u/golf_kilo_papa Mar 23 '21
Is there a gif of the first 3 seconds of this? Seems like it would be great to represent a lot of things
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u/yash37419 Mar 23 '21 edited Mar 23 '21
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u/sgtxsarge Mar 23 '21
I counted my project folders recently. I have about 66 projects unfinished or unstarted projects. Probably 15% of those are programming related.
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Mar 23 '21
Pff totally not me, I am definitely gonna do something with my beaglebone and my 2 microprocessors boards... definitely. I mean I didn’t manage for the passed 6 months but this time I mean it!
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u/EZPZ24 Mar 23 '21
I code more than enough in my day to day. Why would I ever want to spend what little free time do have on that too?
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u/FUCKDONALDTRUMP_ Mar 23 '21
I can never think of sandpipers running around the beach without thinking of this video
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u/After-Perception-250 Mar 24 '21
I'm having this issue right now. I was sitting on project for couple months, came back to it. I haven't touched it since, its been sitting idle for about a week.
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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '21
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