Keeping Programming Fun?

nb caffeine asks: "Having recently graduated, and now working as a developer, I've discovered that after 9 hours of programming at work, I have little interest in coming home and working on my personal programming projects. I've become upset with this fact, because while I was in college, I spent quite a bit of time working on personal projects for my own use. I also noticed this trend during my summer internship, and I have a feeling that it isn't going to get any better. It's not to say that I don't get to work with cool technologies at my job, but they aren't anything that I would pick up in my spare time. So, how do my fellow programming geeks balance work related projects and personal projects? Or, if you've already discovered that after 9 hours of programming, the last thing you want to see is a computer, what hobbies does the Slashdot crowd enjoy after they've ruined their hobby by turning it into a job?"

Comments

Re:Consider quitting....

[Anonymous Coward]

You might not have to swich careers in order to keep it a hobbie. If you code C all day and you come home and... code C all night, then yeah, it's going to get old. But some people (such as myself) are okay with coding C during the day, and doing crazy stuff in Ruby at home.

Either way, it's better to have non tech hobbies as well.

Tough it through for a while

[Solder Fumes]

My advice is to work your tail off right now, focus on your job and move up in the company until you achieve a management position. At that point, your job will mostly be personal interaction, aerial views of ongoing projects, and helping develop specifications. That won't burn you out on programming, so you'll be fresh enough to do personal projects. You'll also stay in the loop on current technologies, but not be forced to slog through code unless you want to.

Re:Tough it through for a while

[Colonel Panic]

work your tail off right now, focus on your job and move up in the company until you achieve a management position

In other words, sell your soul. Yeah, that'll really make you want to work on personal projects.

That won't burn you out on programming, so you'll be fresh enough to do personal projects.

It'll just burn you out on life. Wasn't it Henry David Thoreau in Walden who said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation? This corporate management plan sounds like a great way to lead a life of quiet desperation.

Go freelance

[hsoft]

Well, be prepared to live poor, but happy. I'm currently between 2 jobs, and I'm much more actively working on my own projects that trying to find a new job...

Well, unless I'm very lucky and my business get of and finally gets me money, I will soon have to start working for somebody else than myself, because I'm quite running out of money. However, my plan is to work, hum... 1 year, and pay myself a little 3 months of cool developing... again :)

As I said in another post a while ago, money not only buys cars and houses, it buys time. Try to save money for that, instead of wasting money on useless crap, getting into debt, and then being *forced* to work because of these debts.

Re:Go freelance

[simonfunk]

I was raised by a single mom (receiving no alimony or child care) who worked as a waitress while going to school part-time. She earned a lot less than I ever did, and we got by (we even backpacked around Europe a couple of times, when I was three and five). I learned a lot from that about what is necessary in life and what is optional. The margin between what people think they need to spend and what they actually need to spend is HUGE.

One thing that's important to understand is that all productivity is the leveraging of capital, where capital is essentially the sum of the value of your body, knowledge, and property. If you let yourself go into debt (car loans, etc.), you are falling behind the curve. The closer to a net-value of zero you get, the less you have to leverage and the longer it will take to dig yourself out. Conversely, the more you can get ahead of the curve, the more leverage you have, the easier it is to move forward. The lesson in this is: earn first, spend later, never the other way around. Tighten your belts until you get ahead of the curve, and then you can loosen them in measure.

I recommend the book The Millionaire Next Door; also The Richest Man in Babylon. Both of them basically tell the same story: whatever you're living on now, cut it by a mere 10% and save that. Most anybody can manage that, and the long-term results are spectacular. People (by and large) don't get rich by earning a lot, they get rich by spending less than they earn, over many years.

In the end, money is time...

(FWIW, I started consulting at 18, bought my first house at 21, and lived there with two empty bedrooms, and a [debt-free] car I rarely used, for many years. The extra cost of a family would have been incidental.)

Give it time

[jtheory]

When I first started programming professionally, my personal projects just stopped -- I was new, so I felt like I had to really prove myself... and this led naturally to excessive hours on work projects, and stress burnout. After some experimentation, though, I managed to sort out my work life so I could be happy, and still have some energy left over at the end of the day.

If your professional life goes anything like mine, you'll figure out a way to make sure you get enough sleep at night (that alone will give your productivity during the day a big jump, in fewer hours!), and you'll find you have more freedom to push back and control how you spend your time as you gain experience/respect. And once you're more comfortable at work, your taste for personal projects may pick up again.

Just give yourself a year or two to find a niche at work that you like, then see how you feel. Once you're more comfortable in your domain at work, it'll take less out of you during the day -- so you'll have more energy in the evenings to do what you want (this is where a social life might come in too, btw).

Really, it'll depend a lot on how your work life pans out -- if you can score super projects at work that you love (and that demand all of your creative energy during the day)... do you still really need those personal projects? Most people dream of doing what they love *and* getting paid for it. Personally, I *like* my work, but the needs of the business don't always correspond with what would be most fun for me... so I have extra energy left to use.

Good luck!

Work vs Life

[rueger]

Your quandry is this: you found programming to be fun. Got an education, and found a job programming.

Whoops - once programming became your job, it also became work, not fun.

Really you have only two choices: don't program for a living, or don't program for a hobby.

The best advice is to find some other interests and leave the programming for work. It will make you a happier person, a more balanced individual, and will expand your circle of friends to a group larger than just programmers. All of those will help you to enjoy your work more which just might make programming fun again.

It's easy

[Curtman]

So, how do my fellow programming geeks balance work related projects and personal projects?

I cancelled my cable TV subscription, and now I can never think of anything better to do.

Mushrooms

[jupiter909]

Try magic mushrooms, that will get you in a creative mood again. See the world from a differnt point of view but keeping focus. You'll find that the worlds best minds see things from a 'mushroom' type point of view.

Re:Easy

[dubl-u]

They work on personal projects while at work.

There's some truth to this.

Good developers like exploring new technologies and trying new things out. That's how they stay good developers. Smart companies allow for this. Some places, like Google, have formal policies saying that it's ok to spend a certain percentage of your time on personal projects. At others, it's an informal thing.

The alternatives are to a) make your developers miserable, driving away the good, creative ones, or b) make them sneaky. Neither is such a good thing.

Teach

[nonmaskable]

Teach a kid or two to program. Especially a disadvantaged kid. There are a lot of 10-15 year olds without anything good going on in their lives who need something to grab onto.