It's okay to code on nights and weekends

A lot of people that are in tech because it’s a good job got pressured to make it their life. They reasonably pushed back, but the upshot was those of us that are passionate about programming as a hobby got pressured to <i>not</i> do it for fun.<p>Both things are unreasonable. You shouldn’t have to program for fun to get a job. You can be good at it as a profession only. You also should be allowed to love it as a vocation or avocation. That doesn’t make you a sucker.

When I was a teenager and while studying at university I used to spend a lot of my spare time coding. Then after I got a job as a developer this dropped off quite quickly, opting instead to socialise and pursue other hobbies in that time.<p>Since becoming a manager at work less of my time is actual coding, and in the last 6 months or so I have started to code a lot more on my own projects and I&#x27;m really enjoying it. It feels like overall there is a certain desire&#x2F;capacity for it, and if that is getting used up at work, so be it, if not, then it fills up outside of work hours.<p>Either way, each to their own. Some people would probably love to spend more time coding or on other hobbies but have other commitments like family to consider.

It&#x27;s not wrong to code on nights and weekends if you like it. But there&#x27;s also something to be said for developing other interests, that put your brain in a different space. You might even find that it can help with the coding. In my case, I enjoy coding and I also love hiking, and often find that when I&#x27;m stuck, an idea that gets me unstuck occurs to me when I&#x27;m out in the woods and nowhere near a computer.

I&#x27;ve been coding for around 45 years, the vast majority of them in a professional capacity. I still code an hour or more most evenings and at least triple that at the weekends.<p>I love writing software. Over the festive period I wrote a text-based double-entry bookkeeping system with balance sheets and income (p&amp;l) statements. For no reason; I just wanted to.<p>And that&#x27;s how it is for me. In my own time I code what I want and purely for pleasure. Sometimes it <i>relates</i> to work, but it is <i>never</i> actual work stuff.<p>My work-life balance has the usual family aspects, but the main thing for me is making that clear distinction on what my <i>motivation</i> is for what I&#x27;m working on. As long the motivation isn&#x27;t for work benefit that&#x27;s fine, even if the learning outcome does eventually help there.

This whole article really resonates, especially the bits about expectations for others. My main problem is that, having done so much coding (too much), its easy to identify just how long something should take (on average), and so when I see something trivial dragging on and on at work, it instantly raises a lot of questions. This happens so much that I look around at the team with nothing less than the deepest skepticism about just what folks are being paid for.<p>It&#x27;s hard for me to &quot;let them be&quot;, but I have to, obviously. It creates a lot of internal tension that I can&#x27;t figure out how to resolve.

I think it&#x27;s OK too.<p>Not just coding but other types of technical work might benefit from not ruling this out, especially creative or innovative efforts.<p>It can really make a difference depending on where you stand in a project environment.<p>For me it was pretty easy to accept with cargo work where the ships come in at any time 24&#x2F;7.<p>Before I started my company I had already gone the extra mile like this for employers when it really made a difference.<p>So I knew what I was getting into beforehand, I used to say you can run a company OK during business hours alone, but <i>building</i> a company may be the best use of nights &amp; weekends depending on the circumstances.<p>It took some time but doing it for my own self turned out better after all.<p>It&#x27;s not exactly a &quot;super power&quot; but good to have in your arsenal, plus in the right situation you could direct all your focus migrating toward having a 24&#x2F;7 business that hardly ever <i>requires</i> &quot;after-hours&quot; effort after a while.

I would love to code more on nights and weekends, but if I spend too long at the computer it makes my body hurt and feel bad.

It&#x27;s about coding on things you want not things you have to do.<p>&gt;There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line in the summer because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work, and then they would resign.<p>Mark Twain

I have a non-coding day job and spend most of my time thinking about how to improve my projects when I get home, then code late into the night. Trying to get hired as a programmer somewhere, but part of me also worries it might exhaust me from coding on my own projects. If only I had enough spare time to build something worth monetizing while being able to pay the bills...

I agree. I wrote about this recently [1]:<p>&gt; There is a narrative that working hard is inherently bad for your health or that long hours lead to burnout. I disagree. It&#x27;s not about how many hours you put in, but about the enjoyment and quality of the work you&#x27;re doing. Still some of my most favorite memories were some all-nighters I did when I was younger working on something. It wasn&#x27;t even necessarily on projects that ended up meaningful or successful, but it was the act in itself. When you find joy in what you&#x27;re building in the moment, work does not feel like a burden. Instead it feels exciting and exhilarating. These memories, that some might describe as unhealthy are some of my most pleasant ones.<p>It’s all about how you feel about it. When you enjoy it, spending nights and weekends can feel great.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lucumr.pocoo.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;12&#x2F;26&#x2F;reflecting-on-life&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lucumr.pocoo.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;12&#x2F;26&#x2F;reflecting-on-life&#x2F;</a>

Stream of thoughts:<p>- I recently had an hours-long screenshare with a MMO guild leader showing dozens of spreadsheets. I was bewildered until he said that <i>this</i> is the game for him. This stuff is <i>fun</i>. He loves it. You can love what people call &quot;work.&quot;<p>- I fell into a years-long trap of, &quot;if &lt;activity&gt; is not advancing my career or my family, why would it ever be worth doing?&quot; This led to depression and terrible downwards spiraling of Five Why&#x27;s of &quot;what&#x27;s the point of it all?&quot; There&#x27;s very few ways to live life wrongly. All of them are obvious.<p>- I just had 2 weeks off where I didn&#x27;t look at a single line of code. The longest stretch in my career. I was worried I&#x27;d come back to work and feel I wasted my time off. But no, it was amazing. My kids are amazing creatures.

Thank you for sharing this—it resonates deeply with me. I share the same passion and often struggle to separate work from life because I genuinely enjoy programming. Over time, I’ve come to realize that as long as I stay connected to my family and relationships, I can find balance and even relax by doing what I love—coding. Knowing there are others who share these experiences is truly reassuring.<p>By the way, have you read Paul Graham&#x27;s essay &quot;A Project of One&#x27;s Own&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;own.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;own.html</a>)? I really connected with his idea of being a &quot;skater,&quot; and I wonder if you might relate to it as well.

I only code at night, used to grind in the weekends too but ad I get older I find other things to do then give my salaried job free work. I think 8 am to 2pm is a total waste as I remain u focused until the evening for some reason.

The thing is, I code for fun all the time, and don&#x27;t enjoy coding for work often.<p>That disconnect is something I&#x27;m working on lately. Why do I have so much fun when it&#x27;s driven by my own desire, but don&#x27;t enjoy when it&#x27;s driven by the companies desire.

It&#x27;s not only coding. Times ago I did the same as a woodworker&#x2F;contractor. I was lucky to have a shop, where it doesn&#x27;t disturb anyone, if I worked at night or on weekend. But I know, that this time of my life was extraordinary.

I’m the type who always has a side project going. But I do sometimes wonder why we don’t expect plumbers to go home after their 8 hours and mess around with their home plumbing lab in the basement for another 2 :)

it becomes a problem when you project the coding mindset on the world outside ,trying to program people or designing ideal dolutions for utopias while clearly not interested in actual humans, more an idealized angelic version.

The main reason not to code on evenings and weekends is that your employer will own everything you do and might not allow you to do whatever you want anyway.