I still find the pressure to work on side projects in your free time difficult to come to terms with. There's often discussion about how if you don't like what you're doing, then you should find a new job - and easily, if you're in the bay area. I know a lot of really talented devs that don't work on side projects because they are completely consumed by, and love, their work and can't imagine doing anything else. What if your passion is your day job?<p>Having a github full of side projects is helpful when pursuing a job, but I find it difficult to go hard at work and put 100% in and then come home and work on side projects. Usually, I'd rather spend time with friends and family.<p>This seems to disqualify me from a lot of job postings.
Heres the problem I have with this entire discussion -- and this post does address it a bit -- but programming IS a creative role and needs to be treated as such.<p>Many organizations hire programmers as technical roles, but they are generally creatives. A lot of them are night owls, who ebb and flow between long productive stints and proverbial 'writers block'.<p>Many of the best developers I know have a creative desire and just writing code for 10 hours a day doesn't satiate it.<p>I think we need to start treating developers as creatives and giving them the processes they need to be successful and not be stressed, overworked, stretched thin, etc.
> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools.<p>Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment.<p>Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets.<p>And show me a music prodigy who hasn't slogged through 15 years of mind-numbing practice every single day.<p>Only then will I believe that these artists are just getting more "efficient with their tools".<p>In creative fields, it's even <i>more</i> important that you put in a huge volume of work. That's the only way to connect the dots and create something truly unique.
I think problem are working conditions. Modern programmer is expected to work in coffee shop on tiny laptop, practically worst conditions imaginable.<p>If I ask for decent private office and 3x32" screens I just get blank faces and bullshit excuses. Since I started working for myself remotely, I can sustain 10 hours of uninterrupted concentration. Before in office it was more like 30 minutes of concentration per day.
I used to find, btw, the pressure of programming difficult to deal with on an ongoing basis. Then one day it occurred to me:<p><i>Perfection in the big projects doesn't matter. The world is full of crap software. Perfection in the little pieces however really matters, and this makes it possible to build better software.</i><p>I still have stressful days, usually involving bug reports and unhappy users. However, for the most part that realization meant that rather than the stress being an ongoing thing, sometimes lasting days or weeks, it became an occasional thing usually lasting only hours, and the sense of beauty in seeing successful things come together has become more common. That doesn't mean you spend time chasing perfection on every little detail because a lot of things are legitimate tradeoffs and you won't know some deficiencies until it is actually used.<p>To me that is craftsmanship.
<i>Imposter Syndrome</i><p>So, when I was growing up, where the family had to drive 50 miles to visit other Asians, I started to realize there was a pattern to how bumf#cks would come circling in for what was in their minds the justified pleasure of humiliating a non-white person. Most people were decent, but I and my family members stuck out.<p>I notice the same sort of circling at some programmer meet-ups here in the bay area, though I don't think it's my race that prompts it. Programmers make good money, are highly sought after, and in many companies are positively coddled. Just about every group that found itself in such a position has developed some small sub population of arrogant, entitled jerks. In retrospect, I may have been guilty of being a little bit of that myself.<p>One might like to think that good programmers are also good at thinking rationally in general. That's not how it works. Being good at programming just trains us to think rationally in a very specific context. The rest of the time, we're primates vying for a place in the social hierarchy. The best we can hope for are social structures and patterns that co-opt such tendencies for the uncovering of truth and the good of the group. Seeking social contexts that humanely succeed at this should underly one's seeking for a place of work.<p>It's hard to do this, and most of the time, people find a situation that achieves group cohesion and effectiveness through an "us vs them" dynamic.
I recently felt the pinch of stress at work...it wasn't due to being overworked though - it was due to being overstressed, due to insane work deadlines that had me concerned about getting stuff done on time. I'm starting to balance that aspect of my life better, with the realization that I shouldn't drive myself crazy just to meet the deadlines given to me. It's ok to let deadlines slip by if they were unreasonable to begin with, but still do the best I reasonably can.
"Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. "<p>Yeah, like writers, painters and musicians aren't also crazy...
Disclaimer: Off Topic<p>I am feeling like this (burnout/mental sickness of programmers) is becoming a successful theme on HN lately. Many-many posts are popping up to front page.<p>Not like it's a bad thing, being myself a victim it feels good to read experience of fellow coders who has seen what I am about to see or how to avoid seeing it, but still, it is becoming a theme. I am imagining hordes of posts on this topic coming up. Or may be we already have 'em, just the good ones are popping up to front page.<p>There are actually more than one pattern emerging. I think I gotta hint of for writing posts more likely to hit front page.
Programming has been at times my sole obsession.<p>However in the long run it has been and always will be a means to an end.<p>I think the advice to look afield is good. Gerald Sussman seems to agree as he often looks to biology for new ideas. Ideas are not born in a vacuum after all. They need to form hunches and meet other hunches and be given time to cook. That's a number of metaphors... but I think you get where I'm going with this. I hope.<p>Spend time learning the fundamentals for sure but branch out as soon as you can.
Impostor syndrome is an artifact of dimensionality. There are hundreds of answers for "What does it mean to be a good programmer?" We have back-end and front-end, "devops" and "DBA" and "data science". We've let the colonizers (business guys) divide us for <i>their</i> purposes (not ours) and we're muddled. It's hard to know if we're good at our jobs because our jobs are constantly changing (and, sometimes, in ways that leave capability and success negatively correlated). The colonizing gendarmes who are supposed to be able to evaluate our work are even more clueless.<p>What we do would be highly dimensional (i.e. specialized) if we weren't a colonized people. But we'd be able to come to peace with it. We wouldn't fret others knowing more than us (which happens to everyone) if we weren't constantly watching our backs. We are constantly meeting people who know more about certain topics than we do (and, reciprocally, so are they). It wouldn't be an issue if we had more career and income security.<p>It's not something about <i>programming</i> that makes people sick. It's not an intrinsically stressful activity. It's far <i>less</i> demanding (speaking of the work itself, not context and social dynamics) than over 75% of paid labor. What's hurting us is that we're a lost, conquered, and scatterd tribe. We think we're elite specialists, but we've done such an obnoxiously bad job of fighting for ourselves and our own value as to let ourselves be typecast to business subordinates, and it's horrible.<p>It would actually be a win for the more progressive business people (as well as us) if we could get ourselves out of this. Would you want to be operated on by a doctor with the pay and social status of an average programmer? Of course not. Well, similarly, we'd make better products if we got ourselves out of the "business subordinate" trap, and pretty much everyone would win.