How do I get into my ultimate coding zone...? I turn on my computer. :) Hehe..

I spent about 5 hours today coding and I was totally in the zone. I'm talking things were working properly, tests were passing, bugs were being squashed all over the place. It was completely amazing, I felt like a god ruling over my code kingdom.

After about 5 straight hours I realized that I needed food so I got up, stretched my legs and had some dinner. Well I sat back down about an hour ago and I am SO far out of the zone. Everything is breaking, I can't focus and I have no idea why. My kingdom was overrun with a plague of bugs in just the short time I paused to eat.

Moral of the story: when you get in the zone don't stop for anything even if it seems like basic human necessity. After all we aren't human when we're in the zone, we are coding gods.

The next time you see developers wearing headphones, please understand that it's our most polite of saying:

"I'm in the freaking 'zone'. Don't you dare disturb my rhythm in coding and lose my momentum. Now unless it's reaaally that important, leave it in our group chat/email and I'll read it later."

Tap gently. We're at overdrive when we headbang to music while coding.

I contantly keep forgetting to turn on my music. It's like:
*open youtube*
"Wait let me just do this thing real quick"
*alt-tab to ide, start coding*
*get in the zone, coding intensifies*
3 hours later...
"Oh yeah let's turn on some music"
Rinse and repeat...

A common scenario strikes again today:

- Blocked on a problem at the end of the day
- Tell my wife I'm headed home
- Inspiration strikes
- time flies by coding in the zone
- realize I'm super late
- run out the door like a crazy person

SHOUT OUT TO ALL FELLOW DEVELOPERS

It's been 4 days now, I haven't wrote a single line of code. Trying to get in the zone but I don't feel like coding.

Any Suggestions? Please help.

I’ve pretty bad ADHD (diagnosed) my entire adult life, so focus has been a huge struggle for me forever. Here’s my strategy:
- Noise-canceling headphones blasting chiptunes (Spotify has some, but YouTube has the best selection of old-school video game music) I’m usually way less distracted if I listen to music without lyrics.
- A chair cushion (I actually use one of those ridiculous donut ones, but I put a normal sized pillowcase on it. SO comfortable, even after many hours.)
- THE POMODORO METHOD. 25 minutes hardcore coding/debugging, followed by 5 minute intervals for breaks, like checking fb, etc. (Breaks are totally optional if you’re in the zone tho 💪) It’s a great way to reward your brain for focusing.
- And if all else fails, the looming threat of unemployment is always there to keep you motivated 🙃 (Sad but true— always crosses my mind when I’m starting to fall behind on a task)

Whoever invented glossy screens for laptops should be shot! I can't get in the zone for coding while staring into a freaking mirror!!

I don't always listen to music while coding, but when I do, it's because things are absolutely unmitigably fucked and it's going to take some herculean effort to unfuck it.

I have this thing I've done for more years than my kids have been alive when shit really hits the fan and I need to show the staff the old lady can still lay waste.

Step 1: put on "the playlist," which consists of only the most aggressive 90s marilyn manson songs.*
Step 2: put on the headphones, which are noise cancelling and super bassy
Step 3: pound a monster (blue, obv)
Step 4: get super manic
Step 5: get in the zone and destroy several features or a flotilla of bugs in a single night
Step N: make absolute fucking magic
Step N+1: call in sick the next day and sleep til noon

What's your hero process?

*Content has less to do with it than the headspace I've come to associate with it and the fact I can't get drowsy with the constant aggression.

oh man... I just spent 12 hours in the zone and made what was originally meant to be made by 4 developers in close to two weeks(coding in free time)

Aaand I also drank too much coffee...

And I've done it in Node.js which I basically never used before :D ...I applied my coding standards and habits that I use when writing Java and it went like butter... ES2015 is pretty ok actually 😊

Worst: The guy gave me 5 minutes to code a given assignment on paper. I did all the logic and told him I was missing a function whose name I would just Google. He told me I can't always Google. Well... I won't be coding on paper either.

Best: I was given the assignment to clone a part of a production site. Assignment was intended for 3 days and I was given 5 hours. Completition wasn't important, only structure and coding style counted. I cloned everything and even added new features.

You just can't always be in the zone. I hope more interviewers would take that into account and design better questions.

The real question is, how do I get out of the ultimate coding zone?! 😅

Tunes throughout the work day...

Someone's interrupting:
Queen, Don't Stop Me Now

Working on same bug for hours:
Muse, Supermassive Black Hole

Merge Conflicts:
Jay Z, 99 problems

In the zone coding:
xzibit, Concentrate

All bugs squashed, deployed, going home:
Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World

So I was using Coffee Meet Bagel to talk to a girl who is currently travelling. We noticed that the messages were sorted out of orders with incorrect time due to the different time zone we are in.

So naturally, I sent them a big report.

Their support team replied by telling me to do the usual. Restart, update, reinstall, delete everything etc (it’s their default answer!!).

I told them I have done those.

They then rephrased my bug report and told me this is expected as the chat was between two parties with a different time so the messages are sorted out of order due to the time difference.

I guess most developer will get ticked off by that... so I sent them a few pseudo code on how chat across different time zones should have been dealt with...

Life of a developer. Debugging and coding even when on a dating app... 🤷🏽‍♂️

I have to actually like what I'm working on to get in the zone, and a nice glass of water;

You can't forget the good 'ol " fuck off, I'm coding " sign though.

Just finished a 18 hour coding day (It‘s 5:30am here). I just realized that coding is one of the few things I really get in the zone (flow state). It‘s so awesome how I can forget everything around me and be 100% focused on what I‘m doing. And the best thing: I really feel relaxed now.

How do you get in the zone?

Distraction behavior is my worst enemy. I'm productive once I'm coding, but I will do everything under the sun before I start.

Any tips or tricks you use to overrule your lizard brain?

Dark-themed IDE + back-lit keyboard + coffee + headphones = best coding environment ^_^

Though there's always that one asshole who decides to talk to you Only when you're in the zone.

Alright ladies and Gents, i find this topic very interesting but who cannot code without listening and who cannot code without silence

If your in the music listening category, what music genre hits that coding sorcery zone for you?

Ultimate coding zone is where you play hardcore action-adventure PC games with best PC configuration possible...

When i'm in the coding zone i listen the same song on loop, is that weird?

Does anyone else feel you have to do the coding part of development outside of office hours, because the interruptions + even anxiety of being interrupted prevents you from getting into the zone? If I have free time at the weekend I can get into work coding and it's great - I'm so productive - isn't this how work would want me to be 5 days a week? And yet, somehow, the work environment doesn't allow it.

I wanna be a millionaire, so fuckin bad.

So, throughout this week there have been massive trials and tribulations regarding my lack of coding practice however through many nights and days coding I have almost completed the task I was set last week.

I didn't realise how out of practice I was so this posed as a big challenge for me. However I pulled through and tomorrow it will be ready to send for the interview!

I also have another test to do in vanilla php - Typical blog which would be such a doddle now I'm back in the zone. I just have to remember I'm not using Laravel!

The sense of accomplishment is real and I'm so relieved I've come this far. Maybe I will have this career of my dreams which I rightfully deserve.

Below is Stripe, doing random tests :)

I really hate interruptions when i'm deep in my code. Headset on and blocking out the world, then get annoyed taps on the shoulder from boss for not greeting people.
So now i'm out of the zone, browsing devrant and have pissed off the boss for being anti-social.

I'm too ignorant about the rituals you need to do for dating.

I don't usually befriend ladies, I would just keep my distance. being a little cold to them, not hanging around, not chatting too much with them, just a greeting if possible

1. I try to get a little closer(just a little. to avoid da frend zone) to those I'm interested
2. I ask them to a date
3. If she refuses then back the 'being cold' attitude.
4. If she accepts... Haven't happened so I don't fucking know D:

I'm just inept at dealing with landing a date (not coding affecting my dating)

Two brainfarts that resulted in... a lot of pain

I had been coding all day, ~6hrs. I was in the zone, so I hadn't saved to git. It was all uncommitted changes (you see where this is going...)

Brainfart#1: The code used the "Contact" class, but for some reason my hands typed "Product" in this ONE line.

Brainfart#2: I became aware of Brainfart#1, so I changed the variable from "Product" to "Contact". However, I instinctively pressed F2, "Rename Symbol", instead of just changing the variable I was using. Now ALL of the references to "Product" were to the "Contact" class instead, across all of our code.

I finished coding. I committed and pushed the changes, closed the IDE, and left the desk for a snack. When I came back, the automated tests were failing due to an import error. That's when I noticed my mistake. I couldn't do Ctrl+Z because I had closed the editor. I had to change the names one by one across all of our code. "Contact" and "Product" are probably our two most used classes 😭

Fucking corporate bullshit, I was coding (mostly creating bugs and pulling my hair off) all night on my free time (I'm on night shifts I keep the schedule when I have my days off) and at the moment I was making huge progress on my project, I gotta go to sleep to go back to work 4h later to follow a fucking 2h training on team efficiency and cohesion, in other words, how to waste 2h in a useless meeting and not getting it back + interrupting the only night I was in the zone, I'm so tired of this....

Just drove home after working late at the office. Was kind of in the zone and didn't wanna stop.
On my way I see the police closing the road in front of me, because of a pretty bad accident that happened a couple minutes ago.
MFW Coding saved my life!

When you are in the zone coding and you get a call at work "asking if your busy?" :/ then being told it's not important it can wait.... So you hang up and cannot remember wtf you were in the middle of.

Earphones on.

Notifications off.

A boss who is the most inefficient boss ever. No, yours is not, mine is, trust me.

In the middle of coding, never in the zone for obvious reasons. A workmate wants me to call him to discuss stuff as he is working from home, which I wish I were.
I keep coding and decide to call him later.

My boss interrupts me again to TELL ME IF I CAN CALL MY WORKMATE.
Whyyyyyy
FML.

In the zone coding... oh what's this? A text from the wife? Apparently now's the time to resolve last night's fight.

I made a huge mistake

I got "in the zone", I was coding so nice and fast and everything was working, so I didn't want to commit every single minute and then have to go back, cherrypick commits squash them revert them etc.

So I didn't commit anything at all... Now if I were to commit the commit would modify 2 files, create 26 new files and delete 2 files.

The changes include moving from JS to TS, implementing a desearialization scheme, implementing a server class and wrapper client classes, with common type interfaces for different requests...

So now I need to save my changes somewhere, go back to the last commit and slowly incorporate the changes.

I'm dumb

Setupwars. Show off your epic coding zone setup.

Your biggest oh fuck moment as developer. "I dropped the prod DB"

How do I get in the coding zone 🤔 I get buzzed off my tits with caffeine then loud music and code all night

Thought that's how we all do it

Just give me anything BUT coding to work on and I'm instantly in the zone for coding. End of Year Review, access reviews for Audit, any other kind of paperwork, which is most of what my job is these days, and I have some brilliant insight into a problem on my back burner, or a brilliantly simple way to implement a feature I've been stewing on for weeks.

It's my procrastinating nature to not want to do the thing I HAVE to do.

Maybe I should volunteer for more paperwork?

when you're in the zone coding away and the coo comes into your office to kick you out because he wants to go home and he has to set the building's alarm before leaving

our team are responsible to build backend restful API for other team to look up data in DB.
the consumer team just sit beside us.
the interface definition came from our pm in a different time zone. btw he did not have any programming background.
and he insisted that just build what he said and ignore the noise from the consumer team. because each interface change should be considered as new features and need him to prioritize and create user story and he will review the schema with the pm from consumer team and so called architecture who did not coding real shit for years.
we ended up with building shit code not useable by our real consumer.
yes he do manage to keep our team busy building worthless shit and accomplishmented lots of jira items to show we have value to change a useless shit into very hard to use shit

Ah, Visual Studio Code—our trusty sidekick in the coding trenches. But wait, what's this? A delightful new feature designed to keep us on our toes: the 'Disable All Extensions for This Workspace' command. Because who doesn't love a good surprise, especially when it involves disabling all the tools we painstakingly set up?

Picture this: you're in the zone, about to format your document as usual. You hit Ctrl + Shift + P, type 'for', and expect the familiar 'Format Document' to greet you. But no! Instead, 'Disable All Extensions for This Workspace' has decided to make a guest appearance at the top of the list. How thoughtful! It's as if VS Code is saying, "Hey, let's make things interesting by turning off all your extensions without warning."

And the fun doesn't stop there. Once you've accidentally disabled all your extensions, there's no magical 'undo' button to save the day. Nope, you get the joy of manually sifting through your extensions list, re-enabling each one like it's 1999. And let's not forget the mandatory restarts—one to unload the extensions and another to load them back up. Because who doesn't love losing their undo history and breaking their workflow?

So, dear VS Code developers, thank you for adding a dash of unpredictability to our coding sessions. After all, who needs stability and consistency when we can have random command roulette?

I don't feel ready to search for jobs. I don't feel that coding is for me.

There is this guy that wanted to study physics and changed to System Information. He is more logical and rational than me. I'm too "emotional" to code, I get stressed easily when something isn't working.

I'm doing this because I wanted to challenge and prove myself that I could be more. I could have been a teacher, but I thought that it wasn't enough for me and I wanted to go further.

Every day I'm outside of my comfort zone and I don't know where this path will lead me and I'm scared and at the same time, I'm hoping for a happy end.

Maybe my brain is not made for coding, maybe it is more on the database side. But I'm sure of one thing: this year I'll give my best and everything at my current internship to get better at coding with Android Studio, Windows Form, Angular and React. My results will determine if I''m a good fit for coding.

Remember one thing: not everyone can easily learn how to code, but you will never know if you don't try it. Go out of your comfort zone in your life and you will meet a whole new world.

what music do you like to listen to when you're coding (or working in general)? what gets you into the zone?

When I get in my coding zone and tech support needs my help to solve a configuration bug.

coding in the zone and suddenly a higher priority forces you to close your IDE ...

My dream! When I remind myself that I'm not where I want to be yet, I get in that ultimate coding-zone. I push myself to be better every time and that gets me coding and learning new things. And of course, red bull ;)

Not a rant but wanted to get some thoughts from everyone.

I have health problems and unfortunately just had a seizure a few days ago.... Below is directed at my managers. They are nice guys and when I do get back I need them to accommodate although I feel the entire team should be run like this.

Now taking a step back, I see I need to reestablish my way of doing things/mojo. I cannot handle constant chaos and changes. I have to be in a calm, relaxed environment where I can think and enjoy coding: finding and building solutions. That's the summary of how I got into programming and learned to pick things up.

Furthermore, the ideas of the Phoenix Project and what I've shared over the years are actually what I need to be able to perform and excel. Probably the same for everyone and a good way to preempt burnout. It's just in this case, I am the first to go. I cannot be jumping around all the time and need to establish a comfort/expertise zone (but I do and can extend out when given enough time and opportunity).

I'm thinking the EU team probably operates like this, in a calm and orderly environment, less the rare issues.

How to get on the ultimate coding-zone? Easy...

Game Of Thrones music soundtracks. I really love the songs of the series... I can hear them for a full day every day...

Have visual studio/android studio pre-opened and updated, grab coffee, comfy headset and put on some synthwave or metal.
An accompanying deadline looms overhead, but we try not to think about that.

Rowsdower's recipe for coding:
0. Open Spotify
1. Search 'Lazerhawk'
2. Start Artist Radio
3. Enter "The Zone"

I finally got to code something yesterday (I've been slacking OTL everytime I open the Java IDE I use my motivation flies out the window) and I've written down some things to help me do what I need because I forget it if I keep it all in my head. Not that this is a big thing, but it's just to help me to not forget what I've learnt, because I know that'll happen if I don't code.
So I'm coding and checking my notes and all, headphones on, heavy metal blasting, I guess I could say I was in the zone.
Suddenly I get a message from my dad asking me to come to the living room. Turns out my mom had been calling me but I couldn't hear it because I had the headphones on... again 😅 (Sorry mom 😇)
So I left my things and walked to the living room. My mom wanted me to put 2 images I've made for her together. I sat on the couch and waited. And waited. I waited more than I've coded before they called me. I was getting impatient because I was trying to code and I'd been called to wait ;u; I thought I could do it in her computer because it was a simple paint thing so I didn't need the editing program I use.
When she finally showed me what she wanted me to do and I noticed that I hadn't edited one the image she provided me correctly (it didn't look good either way, I butchered the logo she'd given me because stray pixels are a thing that exist 😒 reducing the image also kinda killed it 😅). So I come back to my room and edited it again and made it look a bit better, did what she wanted me to do in the first place and emailed it to her. I went back to the living room and checked it it was good and went back.
I lost too much time and the motivation to code. Played for a bit and then forced myself to go back to coding because I didn't feel motivated (not that I don't like coding, I just lack the motivation most of the time). When I realized it it was 2h30 am and I was getting tired 😴

The music I've been getting into the zone to while coding stopped working today. Why brain whyyyyyyyyyyy.

FYI, it was childish gambinos albums. Listening to them form oldest to latest worked for me ever since 'this is america' was released haha

Ultimate coding zone -------> engage!!

Studying. I decide to study for an exam and not only the "coding-zone" is here, but I have an infinite amount of new ideas. Yesterday I fixed some old bugs in the matter of 30min, did some piece of working code for chrome-like notifications in 10min (working, not pretty) and today passed the exam. Slept 2 hours though.

Brain is insane, what do you want to hear...

So looks like I got a job in a tech company. I won't be coding much but I guess I'd be debugging the errors and reporting them to devs.

I think I'll like this job:
1) Pay is better than I expected considering my long gap in the industry as an employee. Honestly, I don't care about the pay.

2) I like the challenge in debugging things.

3) I don't like coding under pressure and deadlines. Besides, I want to reserve my desire for coding on my side projects - mostly solutions to issues I face. If I go for a developer job, the last thing I would wanna do is
code again after the work. I'd probably go insane with such a life.

4) Recently I realised that I'm not that much of a coding geek as people around me make it seem. I had attended a hackthon and almost every single dev out there had their laptop covered in stickers. They also had grasp on diverse stacks meanwhile I'm quite picky on stacks I even care to read about.

5) I'd have to be a bit more outgoing and interactive with people than my usual self. So yeah, I'll be pushing my comfort zone.

6) Most importantly, this job aligns with the dream job with great pay and freedom that I'm eyeing for.

Biggest coding distraction, when you're in your zone and your boss calls you in for a meeting just to tell you how amazing his holiday was.

!rant
Am I the only one that dancing on my chair to disco/house/techno while coding means I finally reached the Flow zone where I'm focused for real

This is my coding fuel of choice. Import carmelbrulle from tea
That tea shop is my coding zone, where is yours?

Modafinil what what?!

Ok so one of the guys at work is banging on about nootropics and coding to get into the zone..... Dafuq is he taking that for?
And I thought a cheeky trip was enough to envision the program and become one with the code...... Not that I know.

What is your favourite track that helps you get in the zone for marathon coding sessions? Mine is Megadeth's She-Wolf on repeat.

I don't consider myself good at all, but I improved a lot with coding competitions, not in programming itself but in problem solving definitely.

Sometimes the best way to improve is to get out of the comfort zone and try something you don't know how to do at the very moment. You'll learn a lot, and learning what you need at the exact time that you need it is way more effective than studying random things from a book for an exam.