That awkward moment when you are programming with headphones totally ignoring the world around you... then you stop for a moment, you turn around and behind you the other workers are celebrating a birthday by drinking champagne and cutting slices of cake... since at least 5 minutes.

Recipe for a Great Programmer:

Ingredients:
-Books for a computer science curriculum from a top university
-Computer
-Headphones
-Internet
-Stress ball
-Pillow
-Lighter fluid
-Food

Directions:

1. Cover computer science books with lighter fluid
2. Light books on fire
3. Use flames to cook an energy-rich meal for the thousands of hours ahead
4. Pick an IDE
5. Choose a project beyond current capabilities. Good ways to push boundaries:
- Unfamiliar domain (e.g. large scale data processing, UI programming, high performance computing, games)
- Exotic programming language
- Larger in scope than any project before
6. Shut up about your IDE
7. Attempt to build
8. Stop procrastinating on Hacker News
9. Re-attempt to build
10. Squeeze stress ball and scream into pillow as necessary to keep sanity
When stuck:
- Paste stack traces into Google
- Find appropriate mailing list to get guidance
- Realize that real learning happens when you are stuck, uncomfortable, and/or frustrated
- Seek out books, classes, or other resources AFTER you have a good understanding of your deficiencies
11. Repeat #4 to #10 for at least 10 years
12. Results guaranteed! (to the same extent static types guarantee bug-free programs)

source: nathanmarz.com

!rant

Yesterday I got a pretty straight-forward task of fixing SASS linting errors from our project. I thought, "How many errors could there be?" Turns out there were just around 2000 errors across 109 files!

I was almost like, "Man, this is going to take a lot of my time!"

So, I started fixing the errors one-by-one with my headphones on and switching music genres after every 2 hours.

After almost 6 hours of continuous bug-fixing, my mind kind of became repellant to the possibility of the outer world and my fingers automatically fell on the right keys in almost no time. My brain was functioning like a computer itself.

And after the end of 7 hours, I reduced the number to less than 1000 errors.

Today, I continued the task and found out that there were some scoping errors I made yesterday (web developers would know this pain of '&').

And after working for almost 6 hours today, I got the number down to 500.

Not a rant, but I felt extremely content with what I did today.

I guess every day is not just about programming, sometimes, it's also about making your code better.

Thanks for reading! :)

I really like having my desk in the corner of the office. Then I can block the entrace with my umbrella while drying it. Combine that with headphones and monitors blocking direct sight of me. So I have the ultimate do not disturb office space for efficient programming!

Anyone have success dealing with nondevs and explaining the “zone” and to not interrupt if I’m programming and would like to share their techniques? I’m the only developer in the company I work for and all my coworkers/bosses don’t get it and even give me grief about using headphones in the office. I’ve actually gone into vacant offices off the open floor plan to try and program uninterrupted, but I don’t know how long I can keep that up without catching flak.

that Moment when u programming with headphones and listening to sweet sounds of Metal-/Hardcore... and your neighbours just WTF

Quick background:I'm am a student at a university in Alabama. I am also working full time and have a family.
My beginning C++ class was online and the teacher was...unique to say politely.
She would post lectures while she did some of the programming examples. That wasn't so bad, except she would cough frequently in the lecture(which wearing headphones would make me jump), and the tempo of her lecture would lull me to sleep after a hard day at work.
What was worse, she would post "projects" for us to do and tell us she would give a guideline in the code.

Well most times what was asked for in the project was topics we hadn't covered fully or she never explained well. Her "guide" was randomly saying a loop should be here and an if and an else should go here, but nothing else would be referenced.

Dropped her the first time, got a Day the second because I just could not follow her lecturing. I later took the class physically and with a different instructor and had the highest grade in the class.

I later had her for web development course and she wasn't as bad on assignments, but damn her coughing still hurt.

That moment when you're programming with headphones on and the song goes: "Someone you know is watching your every move". Spooky!

Programming + music = in the zone

I am looking at Bluetooth in ear headphones and really like the look of BeatsX with the quick charge feature but unsure about the price.

Does anyone have them? What do you think? Worth it?

These past few days were the first days in ages that I actually had time to work on a project. It is also the first time in ages that I pulled all nighters to code. Being reminded of the feeling of putting on some headphones and hacking away on this project was the best feeling I've ever had in so damn long. God I love programming.

If you wanted to know what the project is:
We got an end of year project in comp sci at school and we got a lot of freedom for what we were required to do so I got the idea of creating bank management software cause it seemed pretty simple. But then I started the project and realized how much more I could do with this. So I've been working on an entire bank management program including account creation, database creation, file encryption, payment options, and credit/debit card attaching. It is currently text based but I'd like to create a gui in the time we have left to finish. I'd also like to incorporate more features that come to mind.