Interviewer: "I checked your Github, your side projects look very interesting! Tell me about your other hobbies."

Me: "other hobbies?"

"So what are your hobbies?"

Me: "programming"

"No i mean your real hobbies, besides the work you do"

Me: *awkward silence*

Father bought a PC in 1997. Back then very few had it. I learned doing things like accessing the internet and sending emails, among others. I remember having added age on websites to be allowed to sign up at times :P My sisters used to play games on it sometimes. The first few ones we had were Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider Chronicles, American McGee's Alice(Which caused us to upgrade the PC xD)... And some others.

I have a memory of this pseudo-3D-looking game where you move in a maze and try answering questions. I want to remember its name, but I cannot :(

We literally have video evidence of me liking the computer as a child, yet my parents either say I'm addicted or deny I've ever liked it before. Not only that, but continuously limiting my time with the PC hasn't been a literal obstacle in my way of trying to do things in their opinion. Funny how my parents think the last few years I've been my worst when they've hurt me in those years so much that our relationship is guaranteed not working out. There were doubts in my head before, but now it's cemented and there is no way of going back. Father, for example, tells me it's too late to do anything with a PC now(As well as how I've been unable to use the PC. He looks at these pro players' footage in some TV show and he's like, „You've been unable to use your hobbies“, as if they have never ever screamed at me for perceived gaming and not actually cared to check), and I need to look for a „real“ job.

Sorry. I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning. Feel like a zombie because of ongoing weirdly insufficient sleep, even though I sleep kinda more than normal. Even when I took Melatonine for that it didn't help at all.

Childhood was where beating began. I was about 6/7. Right when I entered school. The first school that I attended was a private one and supposedly for „Wunderkinds“, while in reality I haven't seen a SINGLE teacher or psychologist approve of it, their argument being that children were basically drowned in work that wasn't age-appropriate(I don't mean anything bad. Just that teaching about Galaxies and all in first grade isn't the brightest idea). There was always a mountain of homework to do and as opposed to some other countries, we had to do it on a day to day basis. We didn't have a week-long deadline. I was predictably not keeping up with it as I could have, had it been a normal amount, so my parents decided I didn't want to study and began their methods of getting me to „study“. I have yet to see a person able to keep up with that school's tempo, no matter the age.

This place was also where I got bullied. I felt I had nowhere to be: At home, the parents' situation, at school, the bully. I never really went outside to play with other children, so I missed that part of childhood.

After the second year of school I was transferred to an advanced German school, called like that because they taught German and not English there. I also got to learn a bit of Russian before they removed it from school. In that period I used to attend ballet. But for less than a year. And piano, which I remember having attended for quite a long while, some years, if my memory isn't fried. I quit it because of it having been forced on me. Last piece I ever played fully was Beethoven's Marmotte.

In this school I was once again the outcast of the class. I had some people to interact with. All of those interactions lasted a few years at most. Then, because of a part of my class choosing me as a laughing-stock N2 and another girl as the N1, I found my best friend, who I still have today. She's the only friend I have nearby.

Most of the time I hated myself. Even today I struggle with that sometimes.

After that came university. This us where I got something like a friend circle at last. But it still didn't last. I got in a relationship with one of the guys, but I was just attracted. There was another I couldn't dare getting close to. Turns out he also had something for me. Then he disappeared from our lives and a year after, I still cannot forget the person. If I want to, I have to deprive myself of my own personality. Not a thing I'm willing to give up. Then I broke up with the guy I was in a relationship with and completely disappeared from the friendship circle. To be honest, I had reasons to. They refused to even try to look for the guy and they called him a friend for years. Sometimes parents hitting me can occur even today, but if I REALLY piss them off.

Now I'm here and oh, my God, I'm officially am aunt now! My sister gave birth to a daughter this morning... She's in Berlin with mother and both she and the child are doing great. I just hope she manages to be a good mother.

First off I dont mind what OS you are using. This rant isnt about the OS but about hypocrisy for some of the users. Secondly Im sorry for typos, I typed it on my phone while waking up.

People are calling Windows spyware, so they are using Linux or MacOS. Even though I disagree with the term spyware I would be fine with that if you weren't a hypocrite.

How many of the people who use Linux and call windows spyware uses Google, Apple, Facebook or Twitter once in a while? I highly doubt you if you say you don't.

A few years back Ive tried to live without anything of google, this also meant blocking YouTube, their trackers an javascript libraries.
Not much of the internet still works if you block google servers.
Google is everywhere and always collects data.

Facebook and twitter also collects data about you. Everyone who has your number in their phone will share it with Whatsapp and google so they can build up a profile. Even if you dont block it.

What I am telling you is that its impossible to avoid being tracked by these companies (including MS).

Every company I mentioned here has a profile on you, if you want it or not.

So let's check which of these companies tries to follow European laws.
Google gets fine after fine but doesnt really try to avoid it.
It looks like Apple, MS, Facebook and Twitter are doing it better on this.

But if you check the European law every European citizen is allowed to request their complete profile collected by a company. And that means complete and not the public part you volunteered to give away.

So I tried it out.
Google didnt want to give it, apple didnt want to give it, Facebook didnt want to give it and Twitter doesnt want to give it.

The hypocrisy is becoming clesr with the following. I did get my complete profile from MS. It was a messy PDF file which crashed most PDF readers.
It contained a list of people I know and how I know them. It contained MS accounts I had in the past and my hobbies. (and quite a lot more)

So from these big companies MS is the only one following the European Law.

So yes they do collect data, but they are open in what they collect.

And Im not saying here that Microsoft is great just because they follow the law.

You can have your own opinion about this and do with it what you want. I just wanted to share some, maybe alternative, facts.

And again this isn't an OS rant or whatever. I dont mind what you do, but I do mind hypocrisy.

Interviewer: "I'll checked your GitHub, your side projects looks very interesting! Tell me about your other hobbies. "

Me:"Other hobbies? "

🎉 Today, I quit!

🖕🏻 Hannah from HR
🖕🏻 Hot desking

👋 I will miss (most of) the other people though. They were ok.

🤔 Now how am I gonna afford my coke and Bollinger hobbies

Trying to spend non-work time doing things other than coding. Which means picking up new hobbies. 😅

Currently trying to teach myself how to draw cartoon cats.

Today, I worked on facial expressions.

Never gonna happen:

* Port our API to graphql. Or even make it just vaguely rest-compliant. Or even just vaguely consistent.
* Migrate from mysql to postgres. Or any sane database.
* Switch codebase from PHP to... well, anything else.
* Teach coworkers to not commit passwords, API keys, etc.
* Teach coworkers to write serious commit messages instead of emoji spam
* Get a silent work environment.
* Get my office to serve better snacks than fermented quinoa spinach bars and raw goat milk kale smoothies
* Find an open source IDE with good framework magic support. Jetbrains, I'll give you my left testicle if you join the light side of the force.
* Buy 2x3 equally sized displays. I'm using 6, but they're various sizes/resolutions.
* Master Rust.
* Finish building my house. I completely replaced the roof, but still have to dig out a cellar (to hide my dead coworkers).
* Repair/replace the foundation of my house (I think Rust is easier)
* Get slim and muscular.

Realistically:

* Get a comfortable salary increase, focus more on platform infrastructure, data design, coaching
* Get fat(ter). Eating, sitting, gaming, coding and sleeping are my hobbies after all.
* Save up for the inevitable mental breakdown-induced retirement.

I'm a simple man, I want to:
- get along with everybody
- be able to depend on my coworkers
- use whatever editor I want
- have vcs (preferably git)
- listen to music while coding
- work with people who share my hobbies (optional)

I hate how one of my hobbies can get me tipsy so easily.

It's really hard to combine it with the working life sometimes 😖😩

I just love special beer(s), it's more than just beer for me, it's a hobby!

I grew up poor. First time I saw a computer face to face was when I was 11 years old. Back then any other references to computers came through media. I genuinely believed that hacking was as seen on TV, didn't even question 2 idiots 1 keyboard and thought it was genius to unplug a computer during "an attack"

Fact is I arrived in this country when I was 11. By the time I had my first laptop I was around 13-14, as you can imagine it went really poorly for someone who was just awarded a machine of never-ending stories and entertainment with absolute fear that a single mistake can cause everything to crash and burn. Heck, I remember when I went to Vodafone and someone recommended Firefox, it was such a novelty back then, heh.

I didn't understand computers. My IT lessons were replaced to work on my dialect, but truth be told it was an awful waste of time. I've learned more from forums than I ever learned from any English teacher. I just sat there twidling my thumbs in agitation.

With no concept of what IT industry entitles (my idea of programming was cubicles and call centres), I never had a slightest clue programming could be for me. I always thought of myself closer to engineering or physics type, but that never really drew my interests. So I dwelled in depression thinking I'm broken. Useless. That there was no calling for me.

I'm 22. For the past year I dipped in and out of programming, it still felt like such black magic.vLast month or so the spell dispelled and I finally feel like my eyes have been opened. I've spent the past 3 days sitting in front of my computer learning or actively programming, with occasional dips into DevRant reading your stories, frustrations and victories and I truly feel at home.

In retrospect I feel like I made the right decision for not chasing any mathematical/physics/engineering degrees, while certainly a goal of mine, I feel like I'd be miserable in those communities. They're closer to hobbies, really.

I guess what I wanted to say is thank you. Thank you DevRant for being the spark in my null future and giving me a sense of purpose and belonging. For the first time I feel like I can make it, like there was hope somewhere over the horizon.

My boyfriend, actually. But I value the human aspect more than the tech genius in fairness. He may be no Linus Torvalds but I don't care and wouldn't change him.

Why him?

He's very kind to less experienced developers and always happy to help them. He teaches them not only how to solve things but how to get un-stuck the next time and what to learn.
His code reviews are inside out, not just a quick scan, he gives a chance to learn and takes one for himself too.
He takes pride in delivering great quality, well thought over code, on time.
He owns his mistakes and isn't afraid to admit when he makes them.
He reads a ton of tech books and always learns something new yet stays humble while discussing things he knows a lot about.
He has a ton of hobbies other than coding which he's good at.

Ah there, yeah whatever I'm a big softie today 😋 he's not on DevRant btw. Also sometimes I want to punch him too, but mainly he's a good guy :)

HR Requirements:
- Must have an active social life with hobbies and interests outside work.
Dev Requirements
- Must have an active GIT hub profile to the point that you couldn't possibly have a social life

So we're hiring for a new junior dev and for the most part it's been going great! We have some promising candidates and I am so glad to finally have a new dev on the team!

However, I would like to take a moment and offer a few suggestions to the people who wish to work for this great and illustrious company:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE APPLY FOR THE JOB USING THE METHOD INDICATED IN THE AD. Please use our fancy, top-of-the-line, whiz-bang, cloud-based "talent acquisition" system that we paid way too much money for. I promise you, it's easy! Please don't send in your application by email, mail, telephone, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, telegram or carrier pigeon. But most importantly...

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS BEAUTIFUL IN THIS WORLD DO NOT SHOW UP AT OUR OFFICE UNANNOUNCED RESUME-IN-HAND. Believe it or not I do have an actual job that I spend my day doing! If I'm not in a meeting or at lunch or working from home, the best possible scenario is that you'll get 30 seconds of awkward small talk and be pointed to our whiz-bang, top-of-the-line "talent acquisition" system which you should have used in the first place (you did read the ad, right?). And at this point whatever you do...

DO NOT DEMAND AN ON-THE-SPOT INTERVIEW WHEN YOU SHOW UP UNANNOUNCED TO OUR OFFICE! Like, really? Do you think that you've wowed me so with your 30 seconds of awkward small talk that clearly I cannot wait to see what you will do with an entire hour? Look, I prepare for my interviews. I research you, your previous employers, your school and the hobbies you list on your resume. I check out your GitHub and LinkedIn. I may even Google your name! If that is all in order, I try to hassle some people into sitting in with me, find a time that works for everyone, and hope that there is a meeting room available. I'm not going to interview you at reception at 4pm on a Friday afternoon.

Please submit your application through our whiz-bang, top-of-the-line online "talent acquisition" system. Once I figure out how to log in, I promise I will spend an evening and read through all your cover letters with the utmost care. If you seem OK, you'll get an interview. There aren't that many developers in this town.

Xpost from /r/sysadmin:
I occasionally see posts from people who seem like they want to spend every waking hour of every waking minute working on home lab stuff and studying for certs.

If you do this, you're missing out on life which you will regret later, but even if you don't care about missing out on life, it actually is hurting your career.

Being well rounded helps you interact with others at work in a number of ways. It makes you less one dimensional as "the computers guy" and it also gives you topics to discuss with people. If you know how to cook, or brew beer, or bake bread you end up using a lot of your technical and troubleshooting skills. Biking long distancing and learning how to fix your bike helps with your troubleshooting skills too. You learn to look at things from other angles.

Reading novels or writing poetry or making art work also helps because it exercises your brain. Woodworking or metal working involve a lot of skills that'd help your IT career including project planning and measuring and budgeting for each project. Working on cars or motorcycles would be similar. You just have to do SOMETHING.

I have a member of my team who literally has nothing going on in his life other than studying for certs. No friends, no hobbies, and he basically eats nothing but McDonalds and frozen dinners because even making a meal takes time away from his studying. He thinks means he's dedicated and will experience great career success.

But instead he has nothing to talk to anyone about, and when I say nothing, I mean literally nothing. It's borderline terrifying. Even if he was into comic books and video games it might help, which might help him relate to SOME of the IT staff even if the rest of the people at the company know nothing about it. But he doesn't even have that.

This isn't a solitary field anymore. Even if you truly are "the best" you still have to interact with other people and stay mentally stable enough to not burn out. Even if you know more than everyone else (or think you do) you have to try to broaden your horizons.

My first try at greentext.
>Be me
>18y.o recently recruted to a university
>1 month before moving to the university
>Be alone with his computer && electronics hobbys
>My town sucks
>Go on first year student integration camp
>Yay im going to meet a lot of people like me!
>Camp near the lake, 100km from home
>Day 1/7
>Moved my stuff to a house
>I dont know anybody
>Meet 3 friends who are going to live with me
>One of them is great, i like him, he likes to code, uses mac and iphone (it suffices for his needs, he understand everybody else who thinks otherwise)
>Two of them are pro party guys / alcohol vaccums
>Fucking pricks with their boombox
>99% of students are just there to drink a FUCKING LOT
>WTF.jpg
>Day 5/7
>I had been drunk only once at the camp and i havent drunk since because of AlcoholAfterEffects®
>Have a sad moment due to me wasting my time and money here.
>Totaly wasted my time... and found nobody like me
>After that day i meet 2 programers
>I have taught them OOP
>Had a great time
>Night game!
>Bizarre student party rituals
>Use my torch i made literary 8h before the camp had started
>Torch is made from pvc pipe, 9v battery, chinesium buck converter, old led module, switch
>Find the guy with the HUGE TORCH
>Wow. Is it the 100W homemade floodlight?
>Conversation about our constructions
>Both sides were looking for a friend with similar hobbies
>Exchange the contacts
>Hopefuly meet thogether and make few projects in the future
>Present time
>Got 3 friends in one day
>But still dosent understand the huge amount of alcohol nearly everyone is drinking

As a PhD student, I do not dare have hobbies. I mean, I don't exactly have time for it. I could make time for it, but then the phd would take forever.
☹️

!Dev but still a work related wtf moment.

A company has lunchtime sessions where people could present their hobbies or interests. All went well until one guy presented about his and his wife's interest in BDSM, complete with props and photos. The sessions were quietly abandoned after that.

I realized I've need a hobby other than sitting in front of the computer all day.

What non-developer things do you love to do? :)

Incase you wonder where I am gone to: Well. Looks like I'm a part time irganist now xD

Yes, this is me,
Yes, this is very fun,
Yes, I deliberately go to church X)

(I still code a lot)

✅ Fun project
✅ Salary
✅ Code ownership and leadership
✅ Appreciation at work
✅ WFH
✅ No overwork
✅ Sufficient time for relaxation/hobbies
and other things

So today I realized that Im not happy.

When I was a kid I wanted to do many things because I had time and energy but I had no money. Now that Im an adult and I have the money, I have no energy and no will power to try and have personal life in these few hours left of my day. I spend 9 hours at work everyday and totally 1hr 30min is wasted on commuting.

I spent 4 years in uni between lectures and working on my side projects, and I really believed that after uni I will get a job and my life work balance will improve.

After uni I spent 2 years working abroad in 3 jobs at 3 countries. I work as android dev and now Im making a really decent salary.

However Im not happy at all. I realized that life is not about the money. Im changing countries like socks and dont even feel the need to socialize or enjoy my life anymore. Im european and these other eu countries are not that different at all. It came to a point where relationships are meaningless to me. I became an office drone who cares only about work and outside of work I care only about my projects and more work.

At this point im only 25 years old with around 2 years of experience and money is really good, but fuck it Im so tired of being an emigrant and having no stability in life. Im so drained. I spent past 6 years (4 in uni combined with side projects and 2 years working in 3 jobs in different countriee) working my ass off and lying to myself that after the next big thing Im gonna take a break and enjoy life. But its never enough. I dont want to hit 30s or 40s and realize that I wasted my life on pursuing money and didnt get to enjoy life..

Im really considering taking a 6-12 months vacation. I need to find myself. Probably going back to my own country. Just learn how to enjoy life, attend workshops, get to know new city area, meet new people, do some interesting hobbies. Maybe do a little freelance (max 10hrs a week).

Im tired of feeling like I need to make as much money as I can and learn as much about my work as I can. Its not rewarding because its never enough.

Whats the point in that money if I cant enjoy it?

Sometimes its time for other hobbies :)
#DjiP3P

the internet was so good before corporate interests took everything over and made it garbage

before you found real people, instead of shills
real hobbies, instead of someone wanting to sell you knockoff shit by pretending to have information on your hobby
real information, instead of stupid politics which pretend information doesn't exist and keep changing Wikipedia pages or brigading forums with spam or reporting websites or servers as violating rules to remove innocent people and ruin their shit

before you could find tools and use them
and there were no ads
even when there were ads they were just banner ads where you got free iPods and maybe a virus
but they didn't subscribe you to their service monthly and then play psychological tricks on you so you couldn't cancel
even when the popups came we had popup blockers, and the web browsers were on our side and made the feature widespread and viewed the popups as malicious, and now the world's biggest ad company serves the most popular "open source" browser and is in a war against usability because they have to display their brain malware ads to you or else

and you'd get excited to get an email, instead of annoyed it's more fucking corporate spam you don't want from a random website that required you to give your email address so you could've bought a trinket for your friend Bob's birthday that one time and now their subscriber list keeps "forgetting" you unsubscribed

phones have a billion sensors but the app stores are so infested with bullshit none of it matters
it's all rot
everything is starving and making your life worse

we used to do so much with so little
and now we have so much and leave it all on the table to throw poop at each other

don't forget that brigade science tells you nostalgia is you remembering something to be better than it was. be gaslit. webpages disappear now, too. they get changed. archive.org has the records, and got DDoSed the other day. I knew this day would happen. everyone who lies would love for there to be no archives, no records. to burn the modern books

Just a friendly reminder to fellow developers to take care of yourself.

If your system is constantly pumping out cortisol, even when threats are minor, it gets desensitized to the stress signals. We used to react to cortisol with the fight-or-flight response when our lives were in real danger. Nowadays it's produced when you disagree with your coworker or there's a deadline coming up. So your cortisol rises but you neither fight nor run. The result is a stress response that isn't functioning properly. This is when burnout symptoms develop. Same goes for testosterone, dopamine and some other hormones and neurotransmitters. Read up and start proper work hygiene that includes workouts, fresh air activities and manual hobbies.

Your back, wrists and eyes aren't the only things you have to watch out for when coding long hours. Cheers and have a fun weekend!

I'm starting to think we might need a global union for developers. I have been reading the comments today and it looks like a lot us getting way underpaid.

New features should be a moment of joy if they are released. So far so good. People really liked the idea of working together on opensource project. The app is updated. But then we encountered a major problem. It looks like some of us are getting so underpaid that they can't pay for the 14 dollar it cost to start the opensource project they want. We must rebel against this.

14 dollar, how much is 14 dollar. How many hobbies cost 14 dollar to start up. From running to collecting stamps. Its going to cost you more And how many hobbies are you as passionate about as your own open source project.

The next great thing is that it is show in the place where developers are eagerly looking to join a opensource project. And will probably join you're product because I'm sure between all of us there are tons of wonderfull ideas just waiting to be build.

And for me personal I do not mind supporting an app that I use almost every day. And just keeps growing without annoying ads.

So you should be more then willing to pay 14 dollars. And are ready to start recruiting your team.

And if you really can't pay. Your house burned down, you needed it for food. Your only pc is beyond saving. You can be a positive force in this community and do pay with upvotes.

But if you are to much a cheapskate to pay 14 dollars well, I think I was clear enough.

Since this isn't dev, I'll have to make it a rant:

I can have hobbies other than devving, goddamn it! Leave me alone!

Most hobbies need funding to get started and to continue. Wood to carve, cables and electronics to solder. Programmers need only their time (as long as they have a computer). It is the most cheap thing to pick up and learn.

Why is it that every single employer in this field expects you to live and breathe tech and have it as your only source of enjoyment? Can't it just be a job that I show up and do every day and then spend my free time with whatever the hell I want? This morning's job interview:
Hiring manager: so what do you like doing in your free time?
Me: talks about actual hobbies, trying to be personable, making a few jokes, etc
HM: soooo.. nothing tech related then?

I can't imagine any other job expecting this amount of devotion. "So you want to be an accountant but you don't do it after hours for fun!?" Why is this normal?

**Sorry for ranting, job search is getting increasingly frustrating.

I love code but my wife comes first. My kids come first. Although I do code for gun, a lot of times my other hobbies come first.

My life comes first. Am I alone?

typical conversations with nondev coworkers.

so what r ur hobbies?
le me: i code and stuff..

for fun?
le me: i code and stuff..

i mean, like what u do after work.
le me: i code and stuff

but isnt that what you do for work?
le me: Oh My Fckn God You're Right!

I feel like I should pick up a hobby that doesn't involve a computer, something outdoorsy. Anyone else feel the same way?

Lately I have been overthinking a lot. I am stressing myself out on every single decision believing that decisions I make today will define my tomorrow.

In hindsight, all the major and positive impact that have happened in my life were the decisions I took on the fly without much underlying research. The executional part did have me struggle a little but almost all of the best things happened to me were unplanned.

Funnily this has been my philosophy since years but guess what, I failed to follow it this time.

My overthinking and over planning caused me to mess up a little leading to a lot of unwanted anxieties.

Now let's reflect a little on the past, when my first relationship ended.. wait.. even earlier..

When I was in 5th standard, I was crazy bullied at school but I was happy go lucky and things turned out in my favour throughout till date.

I used to do what I loved and enjoyed. I literally never worried or thought about future. Not even once, things just fell in place for me miraculously.

When my first relationship ended, I was shattered. The darkest time of my life and me being all alone, I came out strong.

I used to live happy. I used to do stuff that I loved. I used to not care about what people thought. No socials for me. I used to follow random dark or counter culture stuff and be a little rebel that I am.

I remember, she and I used to go for fuck tons of events, hangout at waterfront of the city, spend time together and just be ourselves.

I never used to compete, compare, or conflict with anyone.

devRant was (and still is) a digital home for me. Wonderful phase of life.

Then shit went south. I joined Reddit. A girl told me about a pen pal app. Met another girl there.

Joined Telegram again to be in touch with her. She wasn't interested but I stayed on Telegram.

I could pick up any girl in minutes and do so effortlessly.

Slowly the twin extrovert in me came out. I started building and maintaining insanely awesome network.

Started spending more time on Reddit and Telegram.

Joined a bunch of professional communities. Career sky rocketd.

I was still happy and living a gala life at this stage.

Slowly, I realised I was underpaid (via professional communities). That unsettled me.

I frantically started hunting for jobs. 2020 and COVID-19 hit. Being indoors sucked more.

Became more aggressive on job hunt, money, building skills, work work work...

Met a hoe who fucked my emotions and ethics even further.

Got a high paying job. WLB went negative.

I started losing myself. I forgot my hobbies. I don't know what happiness is. I don't remember when I last smiled. I started planning my finances. Overthinking and stressing about shit troubled me into sleepless nights followed by early morning calls made things worse to my health.

I lost the clarity of my life. I FUCKING LOST ME.

I want myself back and I am gonna work for it. That happy little rebel Floyd who never gave a fuck about other's opinion on him or his beliefs. That dude who was shy to talk to girls. The guy who'd follow his passion and not society of high paying jobs or shit.

I almost got my finances and taxation sorted. Now I'll work to get my office timings in place. If not then I'll switch and find a job in UK/EU with a good WLB. And at the same time I'll pursue my hobbies.

Enough of rat race shit. Money has always been an outcome of my hard work and high work ethics. I want to live a life and I am willing to trade of extremely high paying/stressful FAANG jobs for a small company keeping me happy.

I'll be the happy Floyd that I was once was.

Because, the heart wants what the heart wants :)

I think I'm not as socially awkward as I once believed. I realize I just have nothing in common with the majority of people.

I don't watch sports, I don't care about cars, or fantasy football, or have any hobbies non-developers would find interesting.

If you want to talk about software patterns, finite automaton, Lua/C APIs, etc, then fuck yeah I'll talk to you all day long.

When ppl ask me if I have any hobbies 😂

Like, isn't my job a hobby?

Found this gem today while looking through confluence.

Goals:
Can the candidate use Slack?
Ask follow up questions if missed anything.
Ask the questions that tell a lot about someone without directly asking it (i.e. Have you ever met someone famous? (Telling what the candidate values in life) What are your hobbies? (Telling if candidate has a work life balance). If you were a crayon, what color would you be and why? (Highlights prominent aspects of candidate’s personality) Please don’t just use these, be creative.)

A crayon???? Das when I hang up

Ideal job?
The one that give me a roof over my head.
And pays my bills.
And bring food on the table.
And give me a lot of free time for my hobbies.
And avoids me to discuss with stupid clients.

Ok, maybe the last one is a bit unrealistic..

Working on what you love may be the most dangerous trap i have ever been told.

Why? You may work on what you love, but for a person that you don't. This will be the most thing that you will encounter on your career. I have been programming since i was 11 and my passion was sucked by my jobs.

And that's why all of my other hobbies will ever become a job, no matter how much people think i am good at it, the only reason i am good at my hobbies is because i don't do it for a living.

You can work on what you love, but don't expect expressing yourself at your job.

There is the Entrepreneurship route, where, instead of sucking your own passion, you should be sucking your employees passion, if you are doing it right.

Well, this’ll get me a downrant and probably a pile of abusive and hateful comments, but I chose WordPress as my dev specialty. It’s in that sweet spot between my own uselessness as a full stack and front-end coder and my clients’ inability to comprehend how to click an “Update plugin” button. So they pay me to do that, plus the occasional “design”, and are seemingly happy to do so.

I think I won something. Not sure what. But my stress levels in my career are consistently at an all-time low. I have lots of flexible time in my day to do work, go outside, get exercise, work on hobbies, network with other people, and be with family. I guess being a WordPress “expert” isn’t all that bad.

I'm wondering - do developers have similar hobbies outside of IT?

For example, my main hobbies are:
- Brewing Beer
- Distilling Spirits
- Drinking copius amounts of alcohol to numb the pain of being a developer
- Gardening / Horticulture
- Martial Arts

i don't think that i'm having a burnout but i think that i'm maybe not so far away from it... several people, including friends, my therapist and also a colleague, told me they see me at risk of sliding into a real burnout.

i've known this for longer that i have a crappy work life balance. the habit of making work the most important part of my own life. thinking about work even in my private time, when i fall asleep, when i wake up in the night or in the morning. the tendency to think about problems, plans, coworkers, not being able to quit work mentally. the idea that i have to prove to everybody at work that i'm awesome. the feeling that, after a work day, i'm just "waiting" at home for the next day, in idle mode, so i can continue working on a problem (like a bug) that's occupying my whole mind. and at the same time, feeling totally empty after work, having no energy. i've lost interest and quit several hobbies in the last two years that once were important for me. and i think one important reason is that i didn't have any mental energy left to deal with that.

another factor for this development was also the pandemic for sure, because for some time, i had no real social life except for that at work.
but more important is probably that i find my job most of the time really fun and am highly motivated. i have the tendency to say yes to everything and to really commit to and own the problems that are handed to me. (right now, however i feel like there's not much motivation left)
then again there is the feeling that what i do is never good enough, i have little self confidence in my own abilities as a software engineer. there's a big discrepancy between how i myself perceive my work and how other people do (not only at work). on a rational level, i know that what i do is at least "good enough", otherwise i wouldn't have this job, and i wouldn't receive this amount of positive feedback from people. but it's hard to really deeply understand this thing, when there are deep-rooted beliefs like "only perfect is good enough" or "your colleagues will be disappointed and get a negative idea of you (and something bad will happen), if you don't give your best"... and there's also this idea that i have to be this super nerdy person who also codes in their free time, reads IT magazines and stuff, because only then i will fit this stereotype of a software developer, and only then i can be taken seriously and be good enough. no matter if this is fun for me or not.

anyway, right now i'm at a point in life where i'm realizing all this not only rationally, but with full emotional impact... :/ my life feels like it's gone stale and empty. i've lost creativity, warmth and human connection and that hurts a lot.

i'm trying to change my life.
one thing that really helps me right now is to talk with people who have (made) similar experiences. can you relate? if yes, how do / did you address those problems? i would really appreciate to hear your stories...

!(dev || rant)

Dudes and dudettes, i shall ask you all one question: what is the thing/hobby (or things/hobbies) that you always wanted to get into and never gor the chance?

For me i thing first would be brewing, as i would love to refer to myself as a "Brewmaster" like in Warcraft (bonus points if i wear a panda costume) more then an "Engineer" (a trust worthy one even), but i think i might have the chance to as soon as i will have the chance (and means) to move alone as i already know a few things from my dad. The second would be something really cool i saw on reddut and made me remember the old times when i will watch timelapses in this topic on you tube: Crystal growing! Like, middle school chemistry, not meth! At least for now.. 🤔 Anyway, here is a nice pic with some dude's work, looking forward to hear abiut yours!!

PS: Bonus Points for a pic related to the thingie!

I'm basically an introvert. I've lived most of my childhood with my mother alone with few friends and the ones I had betreyed me real hard at some point. So how come that I'm now founding a startup, speaking in front of a big audience at meetups and have a nearly 60/40 work/social life?

At some point I decided to be more social. Making that decision alone had a huge impact. It took several years though, to implement this decision. Some day I cut off my draining social bounds and found energyzing relationships by simple doing what I wanted to do. I started to reach out and experiment with a lot of hobbies like bow casting and going to board games evenings. I made little steps. E.g bow casting is a sport where you don't necessarily interact with others within the sport, but you have the opportunity to interact about the sport.

A physiologist once told me the neat fact, that being an introvert is just an attribute that does not contradict the skill being socially involved. So it is possible with training and decisions to learn how to be more extroverted. For in introvert this is more exhausting and challanging, but definitely possible.

So today I balance my social life and work by visiting meetups, playing board games and all that stuff that makes me comfortable. There I get to know people with similar interests and similar struggle ;)

At some point the work was just not enough to be happy, I identified my missing social interactions as the root cause so I decided to change that.

On the other hand, don't think you have to be social. Don't think you have to care about everything others expect you to care about. It's bullshit. Don't care about that. Rather ask yourself what you want for yourself. Certainly a social life is part of that, but you alone decide how this will look like. E.g. After I decided hey I just don't give a fuck if you like cuddling your cat and when it's birthday is, several months or years later I started to be interested in these things from my own, not because some dippshit society construct expects me to care about it.

So to wrap up:
Introvert is an attribute, social life is a skill.
Deciding for yourself and giving a fuck about others is key.
It takes a shit load of time. But it works.

!dev-ish

I hate whenever people take hobbies and other things that aren't personality traits and try to make it a personality trait.

Your sexuality isn't a personality trait.
Your diet (looking at you *obnoxious* vegans) isn't a personality trait.
Coding isn't a personality trait.
Your race isn't a personality trait.

I'mma end this rant with a !rant tho.

I know they're obnoxious asf but oh my God mechanical keyboards are one of the most amazing sounds on this earth. Sometimes I'll type just to hear that beautiful sound.

!dev

Ive been looking for a hobby for years but nothing is interesting enough.. i lose interest within a few hours (besides cars but thats expensive so i only work on it very once in a while).

But now everything changed.. I was looking for something that keeps my mind busy but I was soooo bored those last months that I went fishing just to get outside..
turns out my new hobby is the opposite of what i was looking for.. fishing and completely turn off my brain.. its so calming to just be alone in the nature and do a very simple task, thowing out and pulling in with a chamce of catching a nice dinner.. try-catch basically..

assembled my first custom rod today, i kept in mind what i liked about certain rods and then put the best of each of them into my own rod..

if youre stressed and and introvert you should try it..

havent been that calm in years..

Remember how much free time we used to have in school? Like I used to play a musical instrument, binge on series, play a ton of games, id pickup random hobbies just because I can.

Being an adult is so fucking depressing I wanna be a kid again.

I worked for a streaming company where I was interviewing a candidate for a device position. I tried digging into his passions and hobbies and he told me he was using rasp pi:s to automatically download torrents and stream to Kodi.

He really wasn't reading up on which company he applied for.

on the long term you are just a minion getting paid enough to live comfortably but no where near enough to live as lavishly as your employer. In most cases, It wont pay enough to allow you to think of retiring early

Often you will feel you have no time to pursue hobbies because keeping up with technology is more important to stay employable.

the fact you can work anytime and anywhere will make many people expect you to work all the time everywhere.

Coding is like the minds virus for me. I can't stop, but I sometimes question if it's good for me. Work is ok nowadays, but keeping a balance in hobbies is so hard. When I discover something new that's fun it can eat me up for days. But that excitement can leave just as quickly with very few projects ever finished as a result.

Finally got my printer up again

Not letting work stress stop me from enjoying my hobbies anymore

A rather happy/neutral post this time for a change. Lol

Firstly the good news: I have successfully recovered from the emotional/mental abuse and have been doing really well. My faith in myself has been slowly restored.

Secondly, I have started to pursue my hobbies again and find joy in them. I spend more and more time listening to music and play video games (CS:GO and AoM).

I have started getting more sun and also spend time outside socialising.

I can sense my happiness and joy get restored in my life.

Now on career front, I have started job hunting again as you all know. The interview process for Product Management is absolutely broken and taxing to go through all the loops.

During all my previous job hunts (three times), I was able to nail down at least one offer in a quarter.

This time, I started in October 2021 and still no success. I have much more experience and skill-set this time yet failures.

Fear not. My optimism is back this time. I am aware of where I am going wrong and sometimes I feel the situation is truly out of my control. The two major reasons I forsee are:

1. Relocation: it can take few months for me to relocate to UK/EU and hence, companies are preferring local candidates.

2. My duration with current employer is just 8 months which could be a potential turn off for many HMs. They might think I am a job hopper and maybe one of the reasons why I got so many calls and opportunities at my previous employer (I was stable with them for 7.5 years).

I feel it's just the matter of time for me now where I must hold my horses and keep the momentum without losing hope.

I will win.

Had an interview with a local recruiting company for a series of jobs they posted. It started with two of their interviewers casually talking to me at a Starbucks. After a while they realized I met the criteria for one of their own job postings so they texted their boss who came down to the coffee shop about five minutes later. Which is when it got weird. She asked me regular questions about the job, then started asking me about non work stuff. She was sitting next to me at a 4 person table. We talked a little about hobbies, I'm really into biking so we talked about that. Which is when it got super weird, she felt my leg up and ran her hand around my chest. I didn't even think anything of that until the interview ended honestly, but it's freaked me out until this day. Never had an interview like that before. Ironically, I didn't get the job, and if I would have gotten the offer it would have had to have been really really good to take it. She gave me the heebie jeebies despite being attractive, who does that, in an interview none the less.

besides coding, what other hobbies do you guys have?
I'll start with mine: football, guitar, singing and bodybuilding

Craziest prep for an interview?

Way back when I interviewed devs, I prepped a bank of Simpsons and Star Trek trivia questions if the candidate answered one of the softball questions ("What are your hobbies?", etc ) that related to either subject. On rare occasion a candidate claimed to be a big trekkie so I asked..

<Deep Space Nine was in it's 5th season>
Me: "What was the name of Captain Sisko's ship?"
C: "Sisko? Was he from the original series?"
Me: "No, Deep Space Nine"
<awkward silence>
C: "Is that the new series?"
Me: "Not really, but lets do an original series question. What does the middle initial 'T' stand for in James T Kirk?"
<awkward silence>
C: "I have no idea. I don't think it stands for anything."

He didn't make the cut.

My boss at the time said I should not document any of those questions/answers just in case we are sued for discrimination.

The client doesn't want to give me her PIN code from GoDaddy but I need it to make changes for her.

She told me that GoDaddy's Customer Support told her she can't give her PIN to anyone. I understand that. I told her what to do but she still wants me to do it.

She came up with the idea of teleconference between me, her and GoDaddy (is that even possible?). We live in two different countries.

She could just do it by herself (as I told her what and how to do) or give me the PIN... Nope, she thinks that it's my business to make things up.

Boss wants me to carry on this because she's difficult and may make us bad PR even if she's not right. He doesn't want a shitstorm to handle.

We made few projects for her in the past, she gave us access to all her WordPresses, FTPs, backups, authinfo codes etc but still doesn't trust us. She always thinks dozen times before she gave us some data.

And she's not even a business client. She runs a few blogs about her hobbies. She doesn't make money from them. It's not a big deal but she treats it like a treasure.

It's not easy to be gentle and kind :)

Believe it or not, my 2nd Hobby is cooking

My best prank: A year ago I was at my friends flat, which he finally rented with his new girlfriend. He is a kind of person, which has like constantly opened 110 tabs in chrome, three or four instances of chrome running, torrenting at full speed and in the meanwhile a few films having opened to "watch" later. He is very very secure about his computer and NEVER leaves me or anyone else alone with his computer. That day we were just talking in the same room, and he goes for some food. I was like yeah thats my chance to prank him. So I opened a new tab and came with an idea - what If I change his desktop background to some random chick, to prank both him and his gf. I knew she will not be mad but his reaction would be priceless (it was his first gf). So I started googling, found a three pretty naked chicks. This was like soft porn, they were still "dressed" but not much. I did not wanted to use a porn for this.
So I was about to download image - right click - save as - little window opened and..

...what the hell, that guy had literally like terabytes of porn in download folder, all totally in one chaos, thousands of images, millions of downloaded videos, all categories just everything from gangbang to milfs or old/ young, what the fuck that computer was like cursed station of porn.

In that point I was like fuck that. This prank has no sense then. So I just closed that little window and did nothing. Prank failed.

Nowdays, He still does not know what I know about his "hobbies". And I will never say him lol. About a months after he broke with his gf and moved to different house. He has now three monitors attached to his computer and 4tb of space. He is still complaining about "lack of space" and "too big downloaded movies" but we all know what is going on lol. We call his "working deck" a sacred porn station.

I didn't have a job during week 15, but I have one now! My favorite desk item: a picture of a dinosaur riding a bicycle, which I picked up at a craft fair this weekend.

... Do you think my coworkers can tell I like cycling?

Before covid 19 I was already working from home. But now I feel that the media makes it sound as if we have 40hours a day. Get more hobbies, practice them all, at the same time! Pfff

I have a dream that I will find a group of programmers that enjoy their craft and we are able to bond together and create the coolest shit we want and monetize it. We will inspire programmers to overthrow corporate America. We will all live in a big house and everyone will have their different hobbies and we can learn from each other and work on whatever we want to do each day. We will have unlimited dried mangoes, chocolate chips, and chips n salsa. We will create a kingdom.

Trains!

But I also believe anything could be geeky if you're invested enough in it, so I'm also into pole-dancing

Do you find it difficult to make new friends in your late 20s? Im talking about situation when you left your hometown, left your university city and started living in a fresh new city while working as a remote dev? Only way to make some would be to get into some hobbies, but for now I just try to kick my anxiety causing addictions (nicotine in particular). Once Im back to my calm state I will get out there, but for now Im just an anxious uninteresting wreck haha. At least Im living with my sister and managed to find a great girlfriend, but in terms of social life I dont have it as much as I wanted. Im in a strange situation where I hate people but at the same time want to connect more with them.

Argh, I hate putting down hobbies and interests on job applications.

I'm partly a techy because I have no other interests!

But instead, I'm suppose to say I like to help Barbara work the till at the local charity shop

WhaT DO you DO oUTsiDE oF wORK? tell ME SOmETHiNg INtereStInG, PreFerABLY noT RelaTED To yOUR joB Or iNdUStry.

You think I have "time" outside of work? I fucking huff copium like every other fucking wageslave, and we ain't fucking friends so I'm not going to divulge the exact types and flavors of choice for me to be judged.

I don't have the time, money or energy to fucking have some respectable instagrammable hobbies for your stupid like about wanting well rounded people.

We both know all you need from me is to not be an asshole.

At a certain point it feels like the industry is going to compete with girls for shit-testing people except we have whiteboarding leetcode as well.

!rant what do you ranters do when you're not ranting or coding? Me? I work on cars. Car in the picture is my gf's mini.

I hate people who think they are always right.

A coworker who seemed to be a friend turns out to be an emotionally needy narcissist who seems to think that he is a perfect human being and is the best example of how to live.

Long story short is that we did some bonding via alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Especially when I was in a bad period in my life where I had little self confidence, was in a bad financial situation and overshared many details abound my personal life.

And yeah we also work as software devs in the same team but I started avoiding working with him directly, because due to his seniority he overcomplicates things a lot to the point where stuff gets postponed for months. Meanwhile I am a simple guy, I do my tasks and if they are not up to the standard I just work on the feedback until Im up to the standard, thats it. Its just a job for me, for him its a way of life and he considers himself to be basically an artist.

Hes always trying to prove me something, showing that the "long way" is the best way and so on. In reality I dont give a fuck about him. I live my own life and I have my own priorities. I work fulltime in one job, also I work part time as a freelancer and in total I make about 20 percent more than he does. Previously before this job I owned my own company where for 2 years I ran my own projects which generated a decent revenue. I know what is hard work and how to sacrifice myself in order to achieve results. I am more pragmatic and I have some limitations of what I can be good at (since I have a shitty working memory due to my ADHD). So I have systems in place and bottom line is that I earn a decent living and my skillset is different. Yeah I agree that in some ways he is better than me, but dude has such a massive inflated ego that now he thinks that he unlocked some sort of universal wisdom and now hes suddenly experienced in every field of life and his opinion is the right one.

This guy takes a massive pride in how good software engineer he is and in every topic or interaction he tries to one up me. Which most of the time is just his preference or in order to gain a 0.0001 percent performance increase. Dude is basically a big walking ego and since "we are close now" his ego started bleeding into personal relationship.

In my personal life, Im in a stable relationship, thinking of proposing soon and getting married. I already co-own an apartment with my current girlfriend. Everything is serious and planned, Im soon to be 30 years old. He is the same age but he still thinks hes young hot shit and all he cares about is getting shitfaced a couple times a week after work and he doesnt really have any other hobbies. He has a girlfriend but I dont see any future in there TBH.

So what I did now is I started putting some distance between us. No more drinking every week with him, maybe maximum once in 2 or 3 weeks. I started working from home more. Also I stopped sharing my personal life with him. Each time when he thinks he is right I just go along with it and dont even pay attention to his emotional manipulations. I just hope one day he fucks off completely and I wont give in to his gaslighting. Maybe in a few months I will be leaving this job, so I will never have to deal with him again.

Lesson learned: dont be vulnerable to coworkers who you bond together only via alcohol.

I need to rant about life decisions, and choosing a dev career probably too early. Not extremely development related, but it's the life of a developer.

TL;DR: I tried a new thing and that thing is now my thing. The new thing is way more work than my old thing but way more rewarding & exciting. Try new things.

I taught myself to program when I was a kid (11 or 12 years old), and since then I have always been absolutely sure that I wanted to be a games programmer. I took classes in high school and college with that aim, and chose a games programming degree. Everything was so simple, nail the degree, get a job programming something, and take the first games job that I could and go from there.

I have always had random side hobbies that I liked to teach myself, just like programming. And in uni I decided that I wanted to learn another language (natural, not programming) because growing up in England meant that I only learned English and was rarely exposed to anything else. The idea of knowing another fascinated me.

So I dabbled in a few different languages, tried to find a culture that seemed to fit my style and attitude to life and others, and eventually found myself learning Korean. That quickly became something I was doing every single day, and I decided I needed to go to Korea and see what life there could be like.

I found out that my university offered a free summer school program for a couple of weeks, all I had to pay for was the flights. So a few months later I was there and it was literally the best thing I'd done in my life to that point. I'd found two things that made me feel even better than the idea of becoming the games programmer I'd always wanted to be. Travelling and using my other language to communicate with people that I couldn't in English. At that point I was still just a beginner, but even the simple conversations with people who couldn't speak English felt awesome.

So when I returned home, I found that that trip had completely thrown a spanner into my life plan. All I could think about after that was improving my language skills and going back there for as long as possible. Who knows what to do.

I did exactly that. I studied harder than I'd ever studied for anything and left the next year to go and study in Korea, now with intermediate language skills, everyday conversations no longer being a problem at all.

Now I live here, I will be here for the next year and I have to return to England for one year to finish my degree. Then instead of having my simple plan of becoming a developer, I can think of nothing I want to do less than just stay in England doing the same job every day, nothing to do with language. I need to be at least travelling to Korea, and using my language skills in at least some way.

The current WIP plan is to take intensive language classes here (from next week, every single weekday), build awesome dev side projects and contribute to open source stuff. Then try to build a life of freelance translation/interpreting/language teaching and software development (maybe here, maybe Korea).

So the point of this rant is that before, I had a solid plan. Now I am sat in my bed in Korea writing this, thinking about how I have almost no idea how I'm going to build the life that I want. And yet somehow, the uncertainty makes this so much more exciting and fulfilling. There's a lot more worrying, planning and deciding to do. But I think the fact that I completely changed my life goals just through a small decision one day to satisfy a curiosity is a huge life lesson for me. And maybe reading this will help other people decide to just try doing something different for once, and see if your life plan holds up.

If it does, never stop trying new things. If it doesn't (like mine), then you now know that you've found something that you love as much as or even more that your plan before. Something that you might have lived your whole life never finding.

I don't expect many people to read this all, but writing it here has been very cathartic for me, and it's still a rant because now I have so much more work and planning to do. But it's the good kind of work.

Things aren't so simple now, but they're way more worth it.

Well I was laid off at my last company with 6 weeks paid holiday at the end of my employment - since one of my hobbies is volunteering at the red cross as paramedic / ambulance driver, I was on duty quite often in those 6 weeks but since this job does not pay well, I had to look for something different and so I did - after those 6 weeks.

I found one quite nice job posting online at 1 am in the morning, sent my application out at 2 am and went to bed as I had a 12 hours shift at that day. I didn't really think that I'd get a reply but at 6 pm I got a call, talked to the guy and he asked me if I could come in the next day and talk to him in person and show him some stuff I did lately. I didn't really have projects to show as most of my previous work was under a NDA and so I just developed a small blog engine to show off (the main thing he wanted to see was my coding style). So I went there at 7:15pm , talked to them and at 10pm I got the contract - I signed the contract about 48 hours after I applied to the job :)

Continuous emails from recruiters:

"I saw your profile on LinkedIn and wanted to see if you were interested in a career as an Area Sales Rep for [cell provider]. Here's the benefits!"

degree says IT, past jobs say IT, hobbies say IT, interests say IT. Do they just send that to everyone no matter what the profile says??

It is the year 2451 ad and mankind rules the galaxy with a lazy iron fist. There are roughly 14,000 civilizations, comprised of just over
17,000 intelligent species on a quarter of a million earth-like
worlds. And all of them call themselves 'the galactic empire'.
No one told them that twenty planets doesn't qualify them for the title "galactic."

Well, we could rule, if we wanted to. Most of its just backwaters that no one wants anyway. It turned out that the reason no one invaded earth before was because they were too busy fighting themselves. Stupidity it appears, is not a unique human quality.That and the sex robots. Theres more of them in the galaxy than actual meatbags. Many species had taken to artificial wombs and 'vatbabies', which is exactly what they are called. Those poor bastards will carry that label for life.

We never did break light speed, but most of the rich exist in hypersleep anyway. Most of them only wake up once a year or so. There are some that only creek out of bed to check their stock portfolio. I hear there is even one trillionaire thats up and about once a century to ask if we have broken light speed yet.

Despite all the progress over the last 400 years, historians all agree about the most significant event in modern history.
The lobster went extinct two hundred years ago on earth.
Theres been riots ever since.

* * *

In other news I'm still working on the game I guess. It's like totally the most okay indie game you'll ever play--if I ever finish it.

I put about a year of work into the NPC system, and then chatGPT came out.

After everything thats happened, at this point I may just make a game about an indie dev making a survival game, being stuck in the actual apocalypse or some weird political dysopia.

Put it on rewind, it was originally a zombie game. But at the time the market got flooded and steam sales for zombie games cratered. So I pivoted to something more along the lines of fallout. Then the flash market crashed, bunch of publishers folded, and adobe stopped support for flash (probably for the best). Then newgrounds, which I was gonna launch on for promotion (because actual marketing is expensive), ended support for flash.
Was going the route of kickstarter, and that year the KS market got flooded and the bar rose almost over night so you needed super high production quality out the gate, and a network of support you already built for months.

We had a brief nuclear war scare, and I watched the articles come out about market saturation for post-apocalypse games, so I pivoted back to zombies. Then covid happened and the entire topic was really fucked. So I went back to fallout meets rimworld. Then we had a flood of games doing that exact premise pretty much out of the fucking blue, so I went for a more single-survivor type game. Then ukraine happened and the threat of nuclear war has been slowly sapping the genre of its steam, on well, steam.
Then I was told to get a cancer screening which I can't afford. Then I broke a tooth and spent a month in agony.

Then a family member died. Then I made no money from the sale of a business I did everything to help get off the ground, then I helped renovate an entire house on short notice and sell it, then I lost two months living in a hotel
while looking for a new place to live. Then I spent two and a half years suffering low-level alcoholism, insomnia, and drifting between jobs.
Then I wrote amazing poetry. And then I rediscovered my love of math. And then I made out for the first time in over a year. And then I rediscovered my love of piano and guitar. And then I fell into severe depression for the last year. Then I made actual discoveries in math. And I learned to love my hobbies again, and jog, and not drink so much, and sing, and go on long drives, and occasional hikes, and talk to people again, and even start designing games and UIs again. And then I learned that doing amazing things without a lot of money is still possible, and then I discovered the sunk cost fallacy, and run on sentences, and how inside me there was a part of me that refused to quit because of circumstances I couldn't control, and then I learned that life goes on even when others lives have ended, even when everything and everyone never had an once of faith in you, and you've become the avatar of the bad luck brian meme..still, life goes on.

And we try to pick up the pieces, try, one more time, because the climb, and the fall, and the getting back up, is all there is.

What I would recommend, if you're thinking of making a game, or becoming an independent game developer, is, unless you have a *lot* of money upfront (think 50-100k saved, minimum, like one years income *bare* minimum), and unless you already have a full decade in the industry--don't make a game.

Just don't.

If you want to know everthing about my latest travels 🏖, hobbies 🏀, tech 🎮, daily struggles 🤹‍♂️ and more, just visit...

My browser history🌏

!dev
You know your hobbies cost too much when you fancy buying an cnc mill

How to answer questions like "what do you do as hobbies?" when I don't actually have any hobbies?

I finally finished my Bachelors Degree that I was studying for while working 40-60h a week with 2 children.
During this whole time (3.5 years) I was totally into learning everything. Not just for my studies but I read many books about programming and architecture read thousands of blog posts and loved it to be a software developer.

And now suddenly I lost every interest in reading even one tiny post.
Software Development got boring and I just don't care about it anymore.

Probably just a down period, but who knows.

At least I finally can build my unfinished guitars that had to wait for so long. working on them makes me really feel happy 😊

My code does not control my life. I also have other hobbies: like DevRant and CommitStrip.

1) Never be afraid to ask questions.

There are so many instances of situations where assumptions have been made that shouldn’t have been made, resulting in an oversight that could have been rectified earlier in a process and wasn’t.

Just because no one’s asking a question doesn’t mean you’re the only person who has it.

That being said, it’s really important to figure out how to ask questions. Provide enough context so that the audience for your question understands what you’re really asking. If you’re trying to troubleshoot a problem, list out the steps you’ve already tested and what those outcomes were.

2) When you’ve learned something, try to write about it. Try to break it down as though you were explaining it to a child. It’s through breaking down a concept into its most simple terms that you really know that you understand it.

3) Don’t feel like you have to code *all of the time*. Just because this is what you’re doing for a living doesn’t mean that you have to make it your life. Burnout is real, and it happens a lot faster if it’s all you do.

4) Find hobbies outside of tech!

5) Network. There are a number of great communities. I volunteer for and am a member of Virtual Coffee, and can vouch for that community being particularly friendly and approachable.

6) Don’t let a company pay you less than industry standard and convince you that they’re doing you the favor of employing you.

7) Negotiate salary. Always.

8) If you’re a career transitioner, don’t be afraid to talk about your previous work and how it gave you experience that you can use in programming. There’s a whole lot of jobs that require time management, multi-tasking, critical thinking, etc. Those skills are relevant no matter where you got them.

9) If it takes a while for you to get a gig, it’s not necessarily a reflection on you or your abilities.

10) Despite what some people would say, coding’s not for everyone. Don’t feel like you have to continue down a road just because you started walking down it. Life’s not a straight path.

When it started paying my bills and my hobbies 😎 Don’t get me wrong, I like my job, but at the end of the day it’s just a source of income that allows me to have a super nice life outside of work.

Non tech hobbies that helped me with developement:

Lego technic/mecano/knex were a great way to learn about abstraction, you build modules that you can reuse somewhere else.

Cooking is similar, you notice useful patterns that you can reproduce. E.g. roux, which is butter and flour is used for a lot of sauces, then add milk and you get béchamel, which is again used for a lot of sauces.

Coffee brewing helps because I can't focus if I don't get coffee.

Finished etching and soldering the motor board for my CNC mill.

So apart from coding what do you guys do? Personally I have a thing for photography

The time that we dedicate to the things and people that we love/like, when it's enough?

The question is generic and for good reason.
Yesterday, semi-seriously, my gf asked me when we'll have a baby, I answered, seriously, that it's gonna be when I'll feel ready to share the daily time with someone as demanding as another family member growing up.
Now, between job time, hobbies time and girlfriend (gonna marry soon) time the time is already tight and because I'm self sufficient about happiness and kind of a loner I don't share really much time with her most of the days, and from this realisation from her side she broke into crying.
From that experience I understood that there might be need some adjustment on my side.
But on another side I'm puzzled of how other families deal with this, because though my life I've seen couples/married-people that had not really much interactions with each other on a daily basis and seemed fine with living like that.

So knowing this context, what's your experience about this phenomenon through your life time?

It may be wierd. But one of my hobbies is to check top charts of playstore and observe changes in ranking.
Things I notice that except popular social apps most apps are very poor. There are better alternative available in store but dunno why only these poor apps make it to top.

Oh no it's happening to me too... Gave up so many hobbies/interests to focus on my career. Now I have almost no interest in side projects because I don't know what to build. (I mean something actually useful not a to-do list.) I love my job, but is this the path to burnout?

When I go to sleep, driving my car, or when I am distracted with some hobbies my mind give me some ideas and motivation for doing programs and games.
Then I switch on my PC and my laziness come from holidays to fuck my projects and doing anything.
Idk why.
I need help? Or my life as programmer sucks?

Coding has absorbed my life.. I need a new side hobby for balance 😂 something hands-on, physically challenging and *social*. But I live at the most flat and boring place in germany and winter is approaching.. this will be a few boring, hazy months...

"I've recently lost someone who really meant lots for me, we worked together for years, he new all about me, he even saved my dreams, projects and hobbies, such a great memory ..."

"What was his name?"

"D:\"

People sometimes say "you work too much" but the truth is most of the time I'm just coding for fun. It's rare to say, but at least to me, and surely many of you guys my work is one of my hobbies. It sucks that many can't understand that.

One of my hobbies is to repair stuff.

In front of me is a Xiaomi Notebook air 13.3", a very nicely build device.

But it's driving me nuts, the screen is completely glued onto the front glass.
How the fuck am I supposed to exchange that display with a new one?

The main problem with those devices seems to be the display-cable in the hinge.
It might short 3.3V to 19V backlight, killing the display, the hdmi controller and the audio-chip.

2 ez fixes so far, but that fucken display.
And the absolute worst is that there are 0 official replacement parts available for any of the Xiaomi notebook's.
The fuck!

I'm a proud man, but I'm not such a fan of my own farts that I can't admit when I maybe should have listened to other people's advice earlier.

After having been convinced of the scope of impact of AI by someone I respect, I started playing with the Jetbrains AI tools. I am impressed at its ability to process my code and give actually helpful input and to consolidate documentation into a form that is concise and helpful.

I finally get what people mean when they say it saves time.

A couple things that truly warmed me up to it is, one:
I wanted to know if I could return a string, float array, whatever, from c++ to a python script. I was assured the answer was yes, but I just COULD NOT get it to work, so I gave up on it. I asked the question to the Jetbrains AI (4o in this case) and it gave me what I needed, and now I can return a string from c++ to python no problem. There are a lot of little questions like this that I gave up on that I now have to explore again, which is both exciting and annoying, because I already have a thousand hobbies.

And two:
I am working on an html email. It's a mess of tables and text and inline styles. Compared to the markup I'm used to writing, it's tedious to trudge through to make even simple changes. I was able to successfully instruct it to make a specific copy change, while respecting the document's indenting, all on the first try.

I will forever maintain that it will enable a generation of drones that don't understand how to do simple things and will atrophy the skills of otherwise capable people that use it as a crutch.

I will also always maintain that its foundation is built on mass theft and is a monument to the uneven application of intellectual property protection laws. But with DeepSeek coming out and having done the same thing to them, I find myself enjoying the turnabout. I'm also amused that I coincidentally jumped into the pool right as things got interesting.

All that said, as a reference tool, like Google and Wikipedia used to be, it's not the force of pure evil I held it as. It is actually very useful and if used responsibly on an individual level, can be an amazing productivity tool and can even teach its users new things.

Wondering what hobbies should i begin with while waiting for Android Build to be finished

Why does Visual Studio feel so special that if I add a file using File Explorer instead of through Visual Studio, it doesn't detect the file? Why does Visual Studio feel it's more important than the operating system itself?

I get the feeling that trying to live as if being a dev is not a lifestyle is a lie. Not that you can’t have other hobbies as a dev, but development needs to be your first hobby as well as your career if you are going to achieve anything in this industry.

My personal top 4:
good tea,
good booze,
time with gf,
time with friends,

Just clears my head, but doing any of my other hobbies can really help because it just gets me in a different headspace

What do you think about my language choice set for the future (knowing I want to work as a software and app developer) ? Anything to add / remove ?

- C++: Fast and well-documented, so I think it's a standard even in the next decades to come

- Java: Although I think that this language will more likely die in the next decade, I'll maybe keep this language because some dinosaurs enterprises still rely on it. Ah and mainly because it's still widely used in Android apps programming. For now.

Talking about Android, does learning Kotlin worth it ?

- Python: Will mainly use it for automation and prototyping, but nothing more, as it seems not to be widely use in the software development field (or it is ?). I'll also keep it for hobbies, however.

- Rust: This language seems to be a rising star in the industry since it is very clean, classic, as fast as C / C++ while introducing more safety. However I'll wait a bit for this one since it requires more complicated and abstract knowledge I do not have yet.

- Javascript (or more particularly JSX): Hurts to say I'll keep it, even more than Java. I'd let it in the web development hell I won't step in if it was not used in webapps / cross-platform mobile applications. And since this kind of stuff looks trendy, I don't think I can avoid it. Plus, I liked working with React Native. Sorry.

- C#: Seems to be a must when working on Windows software interfaces, so guess I'll have to learn this one. Will do so gladly, it looks better than Java

Why do I make everything so expensive. I'm not a hardcore enthusiast, but at the same time I wont settle for "mainstream" and so I do weird unique things that end up costing more than they should

My mech keyboards are all DIY, I've spent $150-200 on 3 different occasions for 3 different keyboards. I think I'm settling down, but boy that was rough on my wallet.

Now I'm working on a custom workstation build, but I can't just use any normal tower because I ain't no normie. I want it to be SFF/portable so I'm planning on spending $250 just on the shoebox case (DAN A4-SFX). That's probably the most expensive part, besides maybe the GPU. Current plan is R7 1700 or 2700 with 16GB, RX 580 8GB, and 1TB NVMe, around USD$1200 total maybe

I have some ex colleagues and friends now devs in Facebook, Amazon, or other major companies. No life, monothematic arguments, no hobbies, no time. I surely prefer my simpler life.

It's been almost 2 months since I quit my job, more or less, and seeing my Github contributions plummet from daily to nothing is very disheartening.

I tried applying for some jobs during this time but can't even land an interview. My motivation has slowly descended to being almost non-existent, only wanting to earn enough to support my hobbies. I officially have no motivation nor any aspirations in life now except to play video games and eventually, possibly, die alone.

I'm about to graduate and I'm fucking exhausted ALL THE TIME. When I'm not in class, I'm at work. When I'm not at work or class, I'm working on projects. Trying to cover all my bases has left me incredibly anxious and unable to rest, so I don't sleep well and I'm fucking tired constantly, making it more difficult to do *anything*.

And if I hear "it's almost over" ONE MORE TIME :| yes, I know it is, that's why I'm freaking the fuck out, because I have 3 major projects I'm trying to balance on top of my internship.

I'm also trying to lose weight so I have to curve the stress eating. I cut out nicotine but I'm slowly picking it back up because

If I'm constantly stressed
And I can't rest
And I can't enjoy food
And I can't enjoy hobbies

Im basically just sitting here for HOURS every day losing my fucking mind without any distraction. 3 weeks until I graduate and it feels like an eternity. Every day is pain.

Hmm... My first experience with computers was in 1991 or so, when my then best friend had C64. And I was 7. My first PC arrived in 1993. Prince of Persia is the first game I remember from that time. I started programming in 1995 or '96, writing useless things in Pascal. Using PHP since 2000. Still that’s my main programming language. And sadly, my kids have different hobbies than me, so they aren’t even trying to program.

I remember the sound of modem connecting thru phone line to some BBS systems and later to the first public and free internet service in Poland. I remember simple, really „computer-like” voice of my dad’s speech synthesizer (he’s blind person). I remember, when our time to „play on PC” was limited to max 1hr a day... What will our kids remember?

I want to freelance when I'm not doing my full time job. To those that are freelancers, how should I get started? What is your experience? How do you guys get customers?

I speak for many developers when I say: My life is way too fucking stressful right now. I don't even have time for hobbies.

Thanks industry!

I had many good teachers and mentors in the years but one was far most the best. He was a CS Math teacher and hat this flame 🔥 for math and teaching. It was literally affecting everyone in class. He took his time to get everyone on the same level. While some would do better then others all would succeed. What made him special were many little tricks. He would let us all sit together after every topic and test and discuss what each found easy or hard. Everyone would get his time and he would never tolerate offending behavior. After a year we were all grown together helping each other get through the exams. It was kind of magical.

I told him this and he was in fact really happy to hear that. When we meet nowadays we get some drinks and talk about hobbies and stuff.

I'm a software developer, but I'm finding myself more interested bio and electro-mechanical engineering. And to top it off, I'd most like to be a bio-mechanical engineer — which is very different from the other two previous mentions. ...But, I'm well paid now, my last retail start-up failed, and money talks. For now my fogponic ecosystem (fish + biofilter + fog + plants) in my backyard will have to suffice. Now I'm actually interested in waste recycling...

Yeah... I get bored while waiting for parts to come from China. Can never have too many hobbies.

Anyways AMA, if you like. It can be about robots, fish, plants, IoT, apps, web, solar power, 3D printing, VR... You name it!

Friday: I have done a lot of work this week... Should take rest in the weekend
Saturday: Who needs rest? Let's learn new hobbies, watch movies, play games and have fun🤩
Sunday: I think I will take some rest today...But that series is so cool...
Monday Morning: Why did not I take sufficient rest the whole weekend 🥱🤦🏽‍♂️
Monday Afternoon: Slept for two hours in the office time😑

That moment when you realize you spend more money on the non-main hobbies (aircraft shit, coffee, shooting at the shooting range) than on your main passion (programming and tech shit) :^)

50% position (95 hours a month)
100% of my current compensation (~90k$)
In a company like the one I work in now: great team and great tech drive.

Rest of the time is for hobbies and family.

Got kinda addicted to video editing recently 😁

I swear I still cannot figure out how to adjust my chair comfortably for the life of me, and I don't want to embarrass myself by sitting down on the ground and spend 30 minutes figuring out how to make the back not fall when I lean back.

I think I'm a dev.... sigh.

After I quit I didn't do it but out of all my interests and hobbies this one kept bugging me. So yeahhhhhh. I'm a dev.

Speaking of. Got bored and finally made a portfolio website. It's not great but people were asking for a link to my cV. So let me know what you think and I can get around to adjusting.

It's

Www.almxnames.com

The taboo of not finishing.

(As I prefaced to many posts I made, don't take this too seriously)

It is very normal in the programming world to get recommended to finish projects.

But I was wondering "what if you don't?".
Of course, we can agree that having little patience or persistence is not good for any endeavor.

But what if this recurrent focus on finishing is also bad?

Granted, I have started dozens of things and only finished one or two of them and none have become popular.
So there's not a lot of support to back my take.

But I definitely learned a lot from these projects. And I definitely had a lot of fun at some points.

In fact, I think if I had switched more often early on I would have been less miserable, and maybe I would have learned more by the virtue of not getting stuck with some project.

Of course this applies as long as you stay within the same field; it doesn't help learning gardening one day but karate the following.

But even then, there are so many hobbies in life that the chance of finding the one that you love and are the best at are very slim. So switching out of the least pleasant ones might bring you to a favorite one.

But, let's go back to programming.

Here, people recommend finishing things as means to become profitable. If you want to live as a gamedev, then you need to sell games, and to do that, you need to finish games.

That is understandable.

But if gamedev isn't your main profit, why is finishing games a requirement?

What's the point of publishing a game that you know looks like shit?

Why? Why should you put time and energy, pain and stress, all the way through the end only to finish or even publish a game that you can feel ashamed of how awful it looks? (because most 1st games look awful).

Why would you ever want to finish something that looks horrible?

First tries are always terrible, and that's fine, nothing wrong with that.

What's wrong is this sheepthought that you should publish to the public every turd that you can produce in your early learning stages.

I've been a programmer for almost 8 years now. I'm not the best out there, but I consider myself ok.

And considering I had some pretty deep depression pits thanks to this mentality, here's my advice to folk having stress with unfinished projects: don't give a single fuck.

If a side project has become stressful, shelf that shit, maybe tell someone about your issues with it. But don't care much about it.

In fact, if you manage to finish a project but it has costed you a great deal of stress, maybe that should be the shameful thing.

Life is too short to waste it considering suicide because you're not a prolific programmer.

And i would argue that iterating 100 times on different things is far more productive (and fun) than fetting stuck or spending shitloads of time on the first one, even if you don't finish any of them.

Alright my fellow devs and other tech related/adjacent people, we can easily glean from your rants and profiles what you do while developing. But I want to get to know the person behind the screen. After all we aren't our jobs.

So, outside of software development and related activities, what do you do in your spare time?

So I get this email from google for my development account about these new general data protection regulations and what they're doing with admob and all that good stuff.

I didn't dive too deep and there's nothing crazy in it but it definitely feels like it's spawned on by this "selling you data to advertisers thing."

We live in such a weird society where it's like outrage after outrage. I've never known anybody who has NOT known that their statistics and data was sold to third party for marketing for EVERYTHING they do on the computer or phone. For a DECADE or longer. It always seemed to be such a second hand thought but now out of nowhere everyone has their panties in a wad for something they ALREADY knew.

Are we like that miserable/bored/no hobbies/unsatisfied with our first world life that we have to just flip out about dumb crap all the time?

as you guys know this is still related on my prev rants, today i just found out that we cant bring or use headphone while we are on our work stations and guess what you cant chat with your team mates too unless its official business regarding the project other topics such as hobbies or anything are not allowed and you will get reported to the boss...

like G*d dammit you cant code since everything is blocked.. you cant install dev tools and sh*t you cant browse any websites *good thing is the did not block this site.. so far* ... you cant talk... its just staring at the ceiling for 8 freaking hrs -_- someone pls kill me

Searching for a new hobby... Tell me what you do?

I learnt a lot of my java background from Minecraft modding. I even went back a couple years ago when I was learning python and used the Minecraft python api to make my learning a little more interactive.

I'm​ always trying to find cool ways to apply programming to my hobbies, and hacking / modding / breaking the games I play it's a hell of a lot of fun and drives me to learn more

Day 2 of my new job done. Still going over courses and doing jack shit. Today the hiring manager told me to play a game. I have to buy gifts to the girl thats in my office (lol what) and she also has to buy gifts to me in return (wtf and im still getting paid to do nothing), the company will pay for these gifts with a limited budget

Both of us had to fill out a form such as hobbies movies food drinks and if we believe in santa claus

Told this to my hot blonde gf that i have to buy gifts for another girl and she got so jealous. She literally asked me "but what do u need her for" lmao

As she should. Love seeing her jealous and mad -- but only because she disrespected me several times in the year 2023. several times caught her lying to me. Rude behavior from time to time. Always bitching and complaining with the most idiotic phrases and I'll quote "i hate how some kids younger than me are just born in a wealthy multi millionaire billionaire family and they're automatically rich and successful and dont have to do anything in life anymore while i have to struggle and work and never be successful like they are. Im so jealous of them" she keeps complaining about this majority of the time. I got really fucking annoyed. Shes stupid as fuck

And then compared to listening to that dumb shit, i met this girl, who works in the backend part, smart, beautiful, doesnt fucking bitch and complain about such obnoxious bullshit we cant control, works a 9-5 and gets her shit together. She even told me today "u dont have to buy me any of those gifts I'd be really grateful if you can just buy me some tissues for my nose cause i got a small flu haha" she even got the jokes! that was such a humble request.

Now compare that to the behavior of my spoiled blonde gf. Tf?

Im not even complaining by working a 9-5. Im actually very surprised. Everyone in the company is very nice to me and polite. Everyone is very friendly. Im getting paid even by not working shit, just sitting and watching courses to pass a devops cloud certification that the company will also pay for me

Whats going on

In the middle of the semester, my class and I are going to have a class about threads in Java. The teacher is at his normal days, 10 minutes later he just looks at us and says "Do you want to teach? Do you want me to teach today? You know what? I won't teach today. Let's talk about each other, I want to know you more. Tell about your hobbies, what do you do besides your student life?" 😂

Not just for hobbies, better make some money out of it. Otherwise, it becomes more of skills upgrade. Collaborate and try really make $$$. It's all about extra $$$

Alright guys, I need some advice now from you..

My employer is super impressed with my worked and they are willing to relocate me to the US (Seattle).

As you all are aware that I am actively trying to move out of my country but lately have realised that no matter what, it's home.

Also, I am way to close to my mother and don't want to leave her alone for an extended period of time as both my parents are ageing and I cannot be a selfish fuck to ignore them during their last phase of life.

I want to make the most to spend time with them.

Some key points that I need help with
- I am more inclined towards the UK/EU than US
- Need to spend time with parents/family
- Need to secure some cash for some key life moments

Some challenges:
- Cannot take parents along because they'd not be able to settle for more than 1.5 month outside for various reasons
- If I am moving out, why shouldn't I go to a place I love than a place I don't?

Some plans:
Plan A: Move to Seattle (6 months) > FAANG > Get a high paying high in India (all this in 2 year duration) > Settle down > Periodically travel Europe and explore hobbies

Plan B: Move to Seattle (6 months) > FAANG (optional) > Find a job in the UK/EU (4.5 year duration) > Fullfill EU dreams > Get a high paying job in India > Settle > Continue exploring hobbies

Plan C: Stay in India with current company (6 months) > IJP or EJP to the UK/EU (5 year duration) > Fullfill EU dreams > Get a high paying job in India > Settle > Continue exploring hobbies

I need to pick one while keeping in my that I can spend more time with parents and fullfill my dreams as well. I am confident that money will follow and I'll save enough for my retirement. Willing to trade off some extremely high paying jobs for a happier lifestyle.

Trying to make HTML5 video work on IE11 for work purposes... Video randomly doesn't work, weird artifacting errors...

First rant! I'm currently on my first actual dev job and I've been learning a ton, doing extra studying/side projects in my free time and office environment is decent with good colleagues!

BUT

1) I'm getting paid about half as much as someone on my level (education and experience considered) - partly my fault, but thought experience would outweight the shit pay, now I'm really starting to question this bullshit

2) I'm away from all my friends, and by the end of my contract, 90% of them would have graduated... Have no friends outside of work where I live, and any social life I had, died when I moved

3) My work project is fucking tedious and could be flipped upside down to be of actual use, but no, company can't change how they've done things for the past 1000 years. But who gives a flying fuck about junior's suggestions, I haven't got decades of experience to back my ideas, plain logic and industry feedback isn't enough

4) Programming 24/7 for months is doing no favours to my hobbies, as I'm either too tired to do anything, or I don't have the time

5) The piece of shit library that I HAVE to use (because alternative has no support, lacks basic documention, the usual...) is built so that any automation that my project is meant to provide, is next to impossible to achieve, so day-to-day I'm just spitting in the wind as I'm slowly falling behind schedule

Quitting isn't really an option, as I'd have to find a job with significantly higher pay, really quickly to benefit from leaving... which is next to impossible

So here I am, stuck between frustration with aspects of my life and being contempt with other half (the learning and programming as a career)...

Is this something that will stay with me throughout my career/life? Or is it simply a shitty-entry-level situation out of which I'll grow out of?

Have you one a specific hobbies ? Let's talk about different fields of life.

We do not deserve Mads Kristensen and the amazing extensions he makes for Visual Studio.

Decided to try something new, so enrolled in a karate class where my fiancé does her kick boxing after watching her get her black belt last weekend.

Have my first “proper” session tonight after having a free taster session on Tuesday.

Anyone else got hobbies, or recently started one which doesn’t involve computers?

Well one of my hobbies is making karaoke videos for songs I like to sing. So I'll look for an instrumental and if I cant find one make my own by reverse engineering an official audio track and removing the vocals xD then I use karaoke software to create the lyrics animation and stuff. It's pretty fun.

Just wanted to know in general what you guys do besides well duuuh developing. for me I've always hade an intrest in photography, although I haven't been that good at it XD. just wanted to know what you guys do.

That I'm too focused on it. And that I'll never be as good as I want to be.

I'm aware these concerns conflict with each other a bit.

My first concern comes from not devoting more time to other hobbies that just let me do things away from my computer, tech related or not. And the second comes from feeling like I've hit a wall and I don't know how to produce better projects beyond that wall ATM and when I do put time into other hobbies/skills even if it is tech related I feel as if I'm not progressing. It's frustrating.

These are both things I've been working on lately. Cutting social media has helped a little bit.

Maybe is just me but I'm starting to move from the idea that work needs to be fun at all.

If it is, awesome! If it's not it's OK because work is just about 20% of my life in which I don't have a lot of control but enables me to have control over the other 80% (hobbies, relationships, community, fun)

How do you switch off after a day of technical thinking? What hobbies do you enjoy that don't have you sitting in front of a monitor?

I'm thinking of writing a personal website for fun and as a portfolio for my IT projects and hobbies, eg photography.
Currently I'm working with C# and have some Java and Python knowledge, besides meddling here and there with other languages. I've recently started looking into architectures and other stuff.
Do you have any recommendations for into which language and technology I could look into for this project?

I’d either advise a small break where you just focus on other hobbies for a few and let yourself relax,

or I would say learn something new like a new programming language, or a new area of programming (like game development or web development) and just try to make your own projects and stuff that you find fun or new,

or maybe focus on something different in tech, like try IT, Networking, Security, etc.

I suppose it would depend on the person/circumstance.

I’d appreciate anyone to the day I die if they’d save me from this hell full of 40 year old 20 year olds for example and help me escape somewhere where I can be a normal 50 or whatever I am year old
And just relax and be at peace and work on some hobbies and work

In the perfect future machines would do all the work... Everyone would have enough food, a house, a vehicle and lots of hobbies (cause there isn't work to keep us busy). In truth because machines are programmed by humans and humans are self destructive the rich will survive and live a good, work free live, the rest will live below the poverty line, scrapping anything to get something to eat... Remember Elisium?

To those with more years of experience, can software development be a 9-5 career with (almost) no studying outside of work? I want to achieve that. I want it as a source of income and to spend my free time on my hobbies and with family. Is that even possible?

note:
I love programming by the way, I'm just tired of having it taking my whole life and I want to do other things before I die...

Nothing much to ready today, keep scrolling..

I just asked you to keep scrolling, I am using this space to think out loud...

Damn you bloody rebel.. whatever..

Finally after a rough week, festivals, interviews, work stress, and pending tasks, I got a free weekend for myself to be with myself.

I managed to do bare minimum at work. My new line manager isn't quite pleased with how team and I am functioning but whatever.

On Fridays, I usually end the day early and start with personal tasks. I managed to finish some long pending activities.

Today, I was able to do a deep cleaning of digital housekeeping. Sorted some clashes with parents. manage to de-stress and relax my stiff neck muscles.

Apart from that I guess, I am all prepared to interview and get hired for a company on foreign land. I am confident that I can relocate to EU.

And for now, I am actively pursuing two of my hobbies, Music and Finances. I love managing my finances and learning more about technical aspects of audio and listening to more and more music.

I feel happier, relaxed, and calm. Having things under control is such a wonderful feeling.

And I am slowly building a framework to earn, manage, invest, and grow my finances. It's turning out really well. I have setup the base infrastructure.

For music, I have figured the fundamentals and now I will go out buy myself an DAC/AMP to build a portable rig.

This shit is so awesome and makes me happy. I am able to socialise at the end of each day so that keeps me going during the lock-down phase.

I have figured the top key and important things to do at work for my profile and I actually enjoy those.

1. Product discovery - talking to users/customers and finding their pain areas and opportunities to build the solution

2. Product vision/strategy - Dreaming on how the product would evolve and laying out a solid plan to materialise those dreams.

3. Roadmap and prioritisation - this should be self explanatory

4. Success metrics - I really want to get into data and I am getting opportunities to do so. This is super fun. This will help me analyse and show the impact of the what we are building and measuring it while making sure that LT recognises my and my teams' efforts.

I want to and I will excel these 4 keys skills of my profile and be more efficient at my job.

This will give me more time to pursue my hobbies (which will change over time and want to enjoy them the most while I am at them).

Guys, after a rough 2021, the end of the year seems promising with a lot of leaves and short vacation coming up.

Apart from all this, what is more important here is that I got the career and life clarity that I was struggling with for past few months.

For whoever has read till here, YOU ARE BLOODY AWESOME and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there for me always.

I am grateful to be a part of this community and have awesome friends like you all who have been with me though my ups and downs since 2016.

LOVE YOU ALL :)

Apart from the fact that I arrived at a good framework at work to play in problem space than in solution space, this post is more about self realisation and a slight progress in my happiness levels.

Monsoons started in India. The vibe somehow had always been melancholic for me triggering SAD (aka seasonal depression).

However, this year I find it cosier than ever. Hot showers, lazing around on a holiday when it's pouring outside, watching my favourite show/movie. I feel very relaxed in the moment, even when work and life is not as expected/under control.

What I realised is that my problem can be solved. I need a bigger house. That would give me privacy, some personal space for hobbies, and put a barrier between me and parents easing the tension and clashes. I could then get married, and with all the money I will save (from not buying a house myself), can be used to pursue hobbies like music, art, travel, etc.

Whenever I relax, my sleep pattern changes where I have longer duration of deep sleep with many dreams (perhaps processing everything). Does anyone else experience such a phenomenon?

Anyway, life doesn't get easy or hard, we just learn to put up with shit.

i have a lot of art related hobbies, playing music, singing, painting, arts and crafts, a bit of everything

Legitimately thinking about making a joke website to count how many times music starts playing from my phone after I disconnect my headphones...

I don’t know if I just want to harm myself or what… like it’s as if I really enjoyed being burned out so I’m trying to recreate that feeling.

So, the thing is I’m employed as a de facto principal security engineer, basically doing the work of 5-6 people and more, since I haven’t been able to completely shed all my responsibilities from my previous roles as cloud engineer and software developer. On top of that I’m studying my CS Master’s as if I was a full-time student. That’s a lot on my plate. No free time to speak of, and even that’s filled with side projects and, if I can spare the time once in a while, other hobbies.

Now I saw that the security research group in my university is recruiting research assistants to a quantum-resistant cryptography research project - and I am soooo tempted to apply. The topic and what the research project practically aims for, and the potential learning outcomes that I can see from the job description, excite me beyond comprehension!

Am I going to drive myself to burn-out and my marriage to an irreparable state if I take that side job on top of this all? Will I be reasonable and think about that ahead of time, before applying, or will I dive in and just find out?

i think most of my interests/hobbies end up being useful at some point at work, that's why i usually try out a lot of different things. i think two major ones have been language and design, there are concepts in both that help a lot in coding. I've been particularly interested in semiotics, which is a total trip, but it's very worth looking into for any type of science.

What the hell am I!? I wonder if you guys can help me...

I've been programming most of my life but I've never actually been a developer by title or job role. I thought maybe if I list what I do and have done someone here could help? I'm sure there are more of you in a similar boat.

- C# and VB dev for some quick DBMS projects to help me understand and mine databases and create a nice simple view for project teams to show findings from the data to help make certain decisions.
- Automating a lot of my colleagues work with Python and if very restricted then just VBA macros in Excel and MSP. This did also include creating tools to gather data during workshops and converting the data for input into other systems.
- Brought Linux to the office with most team members now moving over to Linux with the peace of mind to know that though they do need to try solve their own problems, I can help if need be.
- Had to learn AWS and then implement an autoscaling and load balanced data center installation of a few Atlassian toolsets.
- Creating the architecture diagrams documentation needed for things like the above point.
- Having said that, also have ended up setting up all the Jira/Confluence etc. servers we use and have implemented so far whether cloud (Azure/AWS) or on prem and set up scripts to automate where possible.
- Implemented an automated workflow view in SharePoint based on SP list data and though in an ASPX page, primarily built in JS.
- Building test systems in PHP/JS with Laravel and Angular to help manage integration between systems. Having quite a time right looking into how to build middleware to connect between SOAP and REST API's, the trouble caused more by the systems and their reliance on frameworks we're trying to cut out of the picture.
- Working on BI and MI and training a team to help on the report creation so that I can do the fun creative stuff and then set them to work on the detail :)

Actually it seems safe to say that it seems that though I've finally moved into a dev office (beforehand being the only developer around) I seem to be the one they go to when a strategic solution is needed ASAP and the normal processes can't be followed (fun for someone with a CompSci degree and a number of project management courses under the belt... though I honestly do enjoy the challenges)

But I always end up Jack of all but master of, well hopefully some at least. let's not even get started on the tech related hobbies from circuit design and IoT to Andoid / iOS and game dev and enjoying a bit of pen testing to make sure we're all safe at work and at home.

As much as I don't like boxes, I'm interested to know if there is in fact a box for me? By the way, the above is just a snapshot of my last two years minus the project management work...

Do you guys read any journals (like ACMs "Journal of Experimental Algorithmics" or ACMs "Queue") or technical magazines (like Oracles "Java Magazine" or "Arstechnica")? If so, which is your favorite or which do you recommend? Curious to hear your suggestions 😉

Anyone else excited for Free RPG Day?

"Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies, and humors." - George Santayana

Thinking about getting a 3D printer like the Creality Ender 3. Any of you guys print and what are some of the fun hobbies or tinkerings you've don't with it?

what are your niche and/or weird hobbies that you don't really talk/share about much with friends

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