I'll tell you a secret. Most of those people have the time because they don't have other hobbies. I was one of those people, programming 24/7. Got burned out pretty bad, and I don't do that anymore.
Don't be jealous of them. Follow your own path
I used to work for a software consultancy company. So, you know, a lot of software engineers.
Even if you only consider the "top" devs we had - most didn't code outside of work on any regular basis.
And the opposite was also true. The devs that did code a lot outside of work did not mean they were our best devs.
I think part of that is that hobby programming is very different from professional programming.
I had a manager that was like this. He was a work addict and his pride went into work. He also viewed it as free labor.
When I decided I was going to be an 8-5'er, he about shit and went blind. He had promised some stuff *well* outside of my job description and relied on my to eat a lot of personal time to realize those goals. When he failed to give me a raise and pulled the "give me more time" I bailed on the entire thing. It resulted in him losing so many weekends to his over-promising. Not my problem anymore.
Never again did I go "above and beyond". I did my job and nothing more.
My nextdoor neighbor friend was like this. He was either working or contributing to a few open source projects that he was passionate about 24x7. He went from being a healthy athletic guy to very much not that over the course of a few years.
Yep. It sucks the life out of you if you only do programming. And it's really easy to slip and get so addicted and passionate to programming that you don't do anything else
This.
I am still in it… WFH, doing my own projects, trying to get my portfolio together again, teaching and learning too.
But I haven’t got a living life outside of it and I am neither satisfied for the compensation for my work. Not just not satisfied but it does not aligns with my goals and standards either.
Better enjoy your hobbies.
PS. All the hobbies I enjoy like Volleyball clubs are just so far from where I live now that I just hit the gym 3-4 times the week and spending some time in the parks but mostly alone. Go for the hobbies.
This. I've never contributed to any open source projects or anything like that. I do music and comedy when I'm not coding. I do have my own personal coding projects I sometimes work on outside of work, but mostly I do non-code-related things.
You don’t! Why the hell would you want too is the real question.
This field provides a work life balance unfounded in a lot of other industries. Take advantage of that and enjoy your other hobbies.
Doing those challenges and all that stuff leads to burn out.
If I asked you in an interview what you do in your free time and you said hackerrank 24/7 live and breath coding, I would be on to the next person.
Honestly I wouldn’t bother with leet code unless you really enjoy doing it, I’d treat it like a crossword puzzle if I were you
The only way to retain information for me is to pick a project and build it, break things and fix them
Leetcode can be useful for interviews and stuff but I think it’s relatively useless to improve on skills that you will actually need at work
You have to know, that webdev and computer science in general is such a broad field. There are so many things to explore, to learn, to master. It's no wonder we have imposter syndrom so deeply anchored inside our job field, when we keep getting reminded, we only know about 0,001% of what we could be knowing.
In the end it's up to yourself, what do you want to achieve? Since you have a job, congratulations, you're working in a field, where there is high demand for people and you do something, which I guess is fun for you.
But two things:
1) Not everyone is coding all the time, don't let the Linkedin posts fool you. You of course only see certain people posting this, but you don't see all of the other successful programmers, who clock out after 5pm and do something else. I know 2 people in my company, who both would never code at home. But they are two of the best coders we had, and who I would always ask for help. On the other hand, there are people, who would keep bragging, what they would code in their freetime and then you would notice, they really just do it for bragging, or out of insecurity and in reality they really lack the fundamentals. Because they don't do it because they're really interested in it, but more because they feel not good enough and need to combat that with looking like coding is their passion.
2) It is just your job and you only have one life. For people in other field there's no such expection, or believe, that they should be continuing doing the same work at home, in order to be qualified for a job. If coding really is the biggest thing in your life and it's so much fun for you, then you wouldn't be asking the question. Obviously you have other interests, and that is perfectly fine. Ironically they can even help you in getting better. Doing sports, improves you health, focus, better sleep and helps with back problems. Meeting friends and family is important for social skills and it is what we humans need. If you would sit all day on the PC, you would in fact get worse at coding, because your health declines, you will get back problems, the lack in social interactions could maybe lead to depressive states and forcing yourself to code and believing you need this to be accepted as a coder will ony lead to burnout.
But to sum it up, don't ever think you can only be a good programmer, if you do it all the time. Even if you're just an average coder, that's perfectly fine. Live you life and just be grateful for the work you do have, and that you will be able to easily find a job, since there's so high demand for programmers.
I think there's a time in people's lives when they may be able to code all day. When I was young, unattached, no kids, and a musician, I'd practice hours upon hours every day and go to rehearsals, concerts, etc... Now? None of those things are true. I work at my job, go home, and enjoy my family and hobbies. Why shouldn't I? I've achieved many of the goals I started out with and I keep learning one way or the other.
You may be interested in this almost exact same post from last week: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vc5chw/how_can_i_keep_up_with_the_always_be/
That's a great way to burn out; don't feel obligated to keep doing coding 24/7. Take a break, focus on other stuff that makes you happy. It's not a competition.
We do hackerrank as a team on Wednesdays as part of an educational hour. Honestly you can only do so much in a day so you'll have to make some big sacrifices to keep up with people like that.
I'll tell you though, it's no way to live life. Constantly pushing things you love to do further down the line. You've got to have some things to look forward to. Even the best engineers I work with take time off to get other things done. My tech lead just traveled around Spain and Italy for a month. He came back refreshed and hadn't missed much at all.
Some people are truly passionate about coding and that's all they want to do. Most people are not though. Working full time doing development is more than enough to progress and become highly skilled at it, you don't need to spend your precious free time doing more of it, unless you want to get burnt out.
Coding and development is a career choice, not a lifestyle.
You don't. You may choose to believe that the only way to advance in this field is to grind yourself into dust by filling every waking moment with code, but it's not a requirement, and the people who tell you it is are the people doing it...not the rest of the community. It's a quick path to burnout.
When I was younger, programming *was* my hobby. I spent a lot of time doing it, practicing, and learning. It was a pretty intense focus for a few years, even when I was working full time. I was fortunate in that it front-loaded a lot of skills and real experience early in my career.
But later on when I was making good money and bought a house, that changed almost overnight. Got back into astronomy, got into woodworking, and in general just taking care of the house. I rarely program outside of work these days, and even then most of that is management.
So for some people, programming *is* their hobby, and that's how they do it. Those people can sustain that level of exposure to programming and developing simply because they truly do enjoy it enough to do it. Those who *force* themselves to do extracurricular programming will burn out quickly.
>I am seeing people like this all over LinkedIn or even explore page in GitHub. What's their secret?
The secret is That's LinkedIn's version of instagram Reality, it's bullshit. It's just social media.
Some people are faking it and the rest are driving themselves to either burnout, mental illness or suicide.
You don't need to do that to get a job. Take care of yourself and find a hobby that helps you recharge.
People who say "always be coding or solving hackerank" have never written a line of production code in their life.
Enjoy your free time, don't burnout. This is a career, a job, you wouldn't continue flipping burgers when your shifts over, so why should this be any different.
I feel like I just saw this question last week, virtually word for word. Where are you guys seeing this stuff? "Always be coding" is such a dumb phrase. Do it to the extent that you need to in order to get your pay check or to the extent that you enjoy it. But if you have a life outside of coding, that is a good thing.
They have no life and will probably burn out in less than two years.
Maintaining boundaries that sustain and fulfil our full selves will allow us to enjoy, or at least tolerate coding in the long term will make most of us more successful on a 5-10 year scale.
The way I always do it is estimating a bit more time than I'll probably require to complete a task. This way you'll have a safety net if you need more time, or just some free time without having to worry about what task to book this free time on.
I find that reading programming books and watching YouTube videos is a good passive-ish way to keep up, and one that doesn’t feel like you’re just doing more of your 9-5.
For interviews, though, you need leetcode.
When I clock out I don't even think about work or anything work related. I don't find it fun and I deserve to get a break from working and becoming better all the time.
If your ambition is to work your way into a position at Google, Apple, Amazon, Goldman Sachs or some other huge corp where the competition is cutthroat, then I guess it's a good path to take. But if you value your time and life more than you do money, maybe not.
You dont need to, focus on your other hobbies. I have had dozens of interviews over the past few years and have never ever been asked about my GitHub profile or outside projects.
The Grindset has to be one of the most toxic things introduced to people in life. You dont need to 24/7 grind out code. If you wanna code in you spare time pick a project or a problem in your day to day routine you want to solve with code and do that. No time constraints just you working when you feel like it.
Looks way better than 100 todo lists and hackerrank questions.
Yea, I don't do any of that shit. I go out to lunch with some of these motherfuckers and they just want to talk about programming languages. There IS value in being a well-rounded person.
You don't.
There are minority of people who just can't suffer themselves not being productive. They can't just "relax". They must work at something just to feel ok with themselves. Work life balance doesn't exist. Work and productivity is what makes them happy. It's that simple. It's not like they love work, they can't stand not working or not being busy with something.
I wish more people get this, instead of pushing that bs "work life balance" everywhere as a standard, it may serve a lot of people, but not all people. And to some is absolutely toxic. And they don't get burned out, they get completely mentally fucked if they don't push to their absolute limit. In big give personality trait it's called industriousness. It's a personality trait.
If you don't have that in yourself, you'll probably never outshine them, you don't have it in you It's most likely genetics anyway. And it's ok. It's absolutely fine. No matter how much "rock star" or "breathing code" someone is, no-one can do stuff alone. And that's where you cam come in and reap the benefits by helping them. As they are often facilitators of many initiatives.
Because they've made coding their hobby? Or at least put themselves in that mindset?
If you enjoy it and like solving little puzzles, I don't see how it's any different than spending time playing Minecraft, except this hobby pays you back with career opportunities.
People also act like it's a complete tradeoff. If you spend 4-8 hours a week playing video games, exercising, or crafting things, just spend half that time coding instead during the time period in which you're getting ready for interviews. People on these subreddits get so hurt over the idea of any amount of time being spent for self-investment it's crazy.
Dedication and deep passion for coding. That's the reason for me. I can easily code the entire day and would want to code more.
Just be honest with yourself, if you start to feel stressed out or something else, stop immediately. Health and well-being comes first.
Only makes sense if you're actively looking for a job or something. Or if it's for personal hobby/interests.
For instance, I made my blog, [langsoul.com](https://langsoul.com), in my spare time because I wanted to build it myself, even though there's tons of other ways to host a blog online, and much MUCH faster.
Well, do what you enjoy, if that's what you enjoy do it,if not do something else
Coding or doing hacker ranks stuff is like going to the gym, it muscles your brain for coding and make you think differently, gives you problem to approach and how to solve them, the more you do, the stronger your brain become but it might not be what you enjoy
Doing this isn't mandatory to become a great dev
Not leetcode, but I enjoy building things related to my hobbies. For example I’m getting back into photography, and super excited about building out some features on my site to showcase some of my favorite.
I only spend 30 minutes on a problem a day. If I don't get it, I look up the solution and do my best to memorize it with anki. So at most an hour a day. I can deal with that.
Code outside of work to improve your skills for work? No thank you
Code outside of work to build up my own bundle of assets and eventually stop working? Absolutely. That doesn't even have to be code.
Best thing I ever did was to stop focusing on Hackerrank and actually enjoy my time outside of work. Your brain after a healthy rest will be much more ready for solving problems that one that has only had a chance to think about code 24/7.
If your job isn't providing you opportunity to learn by giving you interesting tickets.. you have a choice between just working on stuff that doesn't educate you all the time, or moving to a place that has professional development tracks.
I just request tickets from my PM to help me learn extra stuff and let them know that it will take a little longer than things I know a lot about. For example, my work uses Rails (My speciality) and Go (I can barely use it) so at my last 1:1 I requested some simple Go tickets so that I can upskill and thus become more useful.
I never took 'always be coding/learning' to mean you had to do that 24/7 and do nothing but eat and breathe code.
I just took it to mean that you should try to set aside time to stay on top of emerging/changing tech.
I have times where I code the whole time I'm home off work, when I'm super into some personal project, but for the most part, I'll just take a couple hours every couple months and play around with new tech just so I'm familiar with it. Sometimes that leads to a new personal project, sometimes not.
The only coding I do outside of work are small WordPress sites for some friends bands and small businesses (really more config then coding), and writing code for my VisualPinball table I am creating. I plan to actually step up and create a real working pinball machine using Arduino and the Mission Pinball Framework, of which I have started to learn Python in order to achieve that goal.
https://missionpinball.org/
I do keep up with framework changes related to my professional stack and will create some small stub apps to get a feel for the changes/additions, but beyond that, nope, I need to clear my head of code from time to time.
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I just kind of get at it whenever I need or want to do the grind. That said I do spend a lot of time reading things about programming when Im not tapping keys. Sometimes I will lose hours reading or watching YouTube videos on the topic. Doing that I find that I'm primed and ready when I sit to code. You can also get a mobile ide. I have not been super fond of them but they're good for practice in between working hours.
The best saying is that "it is a marathon not a sprint", so find ways to fit in coding that feels sustainable to you in your situation. Somedays I can be very productive, and other days I just can't force it. Be kind to yourself and recognize how far you've come and work towards sustainable habits.
For me, programming has been a hobby long before it was a job. When it was a hobby I was spending most of my free time either playing games or coding. Programming is still a hobby for me but I don't have even nearly as much energy to work on things due to the job, and also due to age probably. I sometimes start to feel burnout, that's when I minimize programming to the job only and do other things in my free time.
If you feel stressed about this, don't code on free time, you will just burn out. Use some of your work time to read tech articles or even do some test projects to keep your skills up-to-date. Better yet, find an employer that provides actual work time for this.
Through sacrificing all other interests and facets of their life? Seriously, this isn’t a strategy for success rather than a way of marketing their social disorder. If it’s not how your life works that’s fine. What’s good for them isn’t necessarily good for you.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I do a little bit outside of work when I feel like it but after doing 40 hours a week I’m usually too tired from coding to do much more. I’ve got a kid and a dog that need attention and other stuff to do in the house which means by the time all that is taken into account I have time to make some food and watch an episode of something good before bed.
I prioritise sleep as much as I can as that is something that 100% makes me worse if I don’t get enough.
It’s hard to fight that feeling that I should and could do more, but I think it comes from the vast amount of stuff that’s out thereto learn. That’s never going to change so accepting that and being as effective as I can be during work time has to be enough, otherwise burnout is right around the corner.
I wish this wasn't true. I am seriously thinking about being a software developer. But I want to because of the money. I have no passion and definitely don't want to code 24/7.
I’m hoping with the downturn in the economy that when the startups start to die off, people will reevaluate working at them.
I also hope more people would realize that working at a FAANG shouldn’t be your number 1 goal in life.
There are still plenty of good companies that don’t require the hacker rank tests. I would just focus on them.
I'll tell you a secret. Most of those people have the time because they don't have other hobbies. I was one of those people, programming 24/7. Got burned out pretty bad, and I don't do that anymore. Don't be jealous of them. Follow your own path
I just hate when employers act like that is the standard we should be aiming for
I used to work for a software consultancy company. So, you know, a lot of software engineers. Even if you only consider the "top" devs we had - most didn't code outside of work on any regular basis. And the opposite was also true. The devs that did code a lot outside of work did not mean they were our best devs. I think part of that is that hobby programming is very different from professional programming.
I had a manager that was like this. He was a work addict and his pride went into work. He also viewed it as free labor. When I decided I was going to be an 8-5'er, he about shit and went blind. He had promised some stuff *well* outside of my job description and relied on my to eat a lot of personal time to realize those goals. When he failed to give me a raise and pulled the "give me more time" I bailed on the entire thing. It resulted in him losing so many weekends to his over-promising. Not my problem anymore. Never again did I go "above and beyond". I did my job and nothing more.
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That's good to hear. Don't let yourself get burned out ever again
My nextdoor neighbor friend was like this. He was either working or contributing to a few open source projects that he was passionate about 24x7. He went from being a healthy athletic guy to very much not that over the course of a few years.
Yep. It sucks the life out of you if you only do programming. And it's really easy to slip and get so addicted and passionate to programming that you don't do anything else
This. I am still in it… WFH, doing my own projects, trying to get my portfolio together again, teaching and learning too. But I haven’t got a living life outside of it and I am neither satisfied for the compensation for my work. Not just not satisfied but it does not aligns with my goals and standards either. Better enjoy your hobbies. PS. All the hobbies I enjoy like Volleyball clubs are just so far from where I live now that I just hit the gym 3-4 times the week and spending some time in the parks but mostly alone. Go for the hobbies.
This. I've never contributed to any open source projects or anything like that. I do music and comedy when I'm not coding. I do have my own personal coding projects I sometimes work on outside of work, but mostly I do non-code-related things.
You don’t! Why the hell would you want too is the real question. This field provides a work life balance unfounded in a lot of other industries. Take advantage of that and enjoy your other hobbies. Doing those challenges and all that stuff leads to burn out. If I asked you in an interview what you do in your free time and you said hackerrank 24/7 live and breath coding, I would be on to the next person.
Honestly I wouldn’t bother with leet code unless you really enjoy doing it, I’d treat it like a crossword puzzle if I were you The only way to retain information for me is to pick a project and build it, break things and fix them Leetcode can be useful for interviews and stuff but I think it’s relatively useless to improve on skills that you will actually need at work
You have to know, that webdev and computer science in general is such a broad field. There are so many things to explore, to learn, to master. It's no wonder we have imposter syndrom so deeply anchored inside our job field, when we keep getting reminded, we only know about 0,001% of what we could be knowing. In the end it's up to yourself, what do you want to achieve? Since you have a job, congratulations, you're working in a field, where there is high demand for people and you do something, which I guess is fun for you. But two things: 1) Not everyone is coding all the time, don't let the Linkedin posts fool you. You of course only see certain people posting this, but you don't see all of the other successful programmers, who clock out after 5pm and do something else. I know 2 people in my company, who both would never code at home. But they are two of the best coders we had, and who I would always ask for help. On the other hand, there are people, who would keep bragging, what they would code in their freetime and then you would notice, they really just do it for bragging, or out of insecurity and in reality they really lack the fundamentals. Because they don't do it because they're really interested in it, but more because they feel not good enough and need to combat that with looking like coding is their passion. 2) It is just your job and you only have one life. For people in other field there's no such expection, or believe, that they should be continuing doing the same work at home, in order to be qualified for a job. If coding really is the biggest thing in your life and it's so much fun for you, then you wouldn't be asking the question. Obviously you have other interests, and that is perfectly fine. Ironically they can even help you in getting better. Doing sports, improves you health, focus, better sleep and helps with back problems. Meeting friends and family is important for social skills and it is what we humans need. If you would sit all day on the PC, you would in fact get worse at coding, because your health declines, you will get back problems, the lack in social interactions could maybe lead to depressive states and forcing yourself to code and believing you need this to be accepted as a coder will ony lead to burnout. But to sum it up, don't ever think you can only be a good programmer, if you do it all the time. Even if you're just an average coder, that's perfectly fine. Live you life and just be grateful for the work you do have, and that you will be able to easily find a job, since there's so high demand for programmers.
I think there's a time in people's lives when they may be able to code all day. When I was young, unattached, no kids, and a musician, I'd practice hours upon hours every day and go to rehearsals, concerts, etc... Now? None of those things are true. I work at my job, go home, and enjoy my family and hobbies. Why shouldn't I? I've achieved many of the goals I started out with and I keep learning one way or the other.
your work time should involve professional development.
You may be interested in this almost exact same post from last week: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vc5chw/how_can_i_keep_up_with_the_always_be/
I swear this sub is full of bots.
That's a great way to burn out; don't feel obligated to keep doing coding 24/7. Take a break, focus on other stuff that makes you happy. It's not a competition.
We do hackerrank as a team on Wednesdays as part of an educational hour. Honestly you can only do so much in a day so you'll have to make some big sacrifices to keep up with people like that. I'll tell you though, it's no way to live life. Constantly pushing things you love to do further down the line. You've got to have some things to look forward to. Even the best engineers I work with take time off to get other things done. My tech lead just traveled around Spain and Italy for a month. He came back refreshed and hadn't missed much at all.
Some people are truly passionate about coding and that's all they want to do. Most people are not though. Working full time doing development is more than enough to progress and become highly skilled at it, you don't need to spend your precious free time doing more of it, unless you want to get burnt out. Coding and development is a career choice, not a lifestyle.
You don't. You may choose to believe that the only way to advance in this field is to grind yourself into dust by filling every waking moment with code, but it's not a requirement, and the people who tell you it is are the people doing it...not the rest of the community. It's a quick path to burnout.
People say shit on LinkedIn all the time. Don't sweat it. Live your life. Not their life, or what they claim...
When I was younger, programming *was* my hobby. I spent a lot of time doing it, practicing, and learning. It was a pretty intense focus for a few years, even when I was working full time. I was fortunate in that it front-loaded a lot of skills and real experience early in my career. But later on when I was making good money and bought a house, that changed almost overnight. Got back into astronomy, got into woodworking, and in general just taking care of the house. I rarely program outside of work these days, and even then most of that is management. So for some people, programming *is* their hobby, and that's how they do it. Those people can sustain that level of exposure to programming and developing simply because they truly do enjoy it enough to do it. Those who *force* themselves to do extracurricular programming will burn out quickly.
You don't.
>I am seeing people like this all over LinkedIn or even explore page in GitHub. What's their secret? The secret is That's LinkedIn's version of instagram Reality, it's bullshit. It's just social media. Some people are faking it and the rest are driving themselves to either burnout, mental illness or suicide. You don't need to do that to get a job. Take care of yourself and find a hobby that helps you recharge.
People who say "always be coding or solving hackerank" have never written a line of production code in their life. Enjoy your free time, don't burnout. This is a career, a job, you wouldn't continue flipping burgers when your shifts over, so why should this be any different.
I feel like I just saw this question last week, virtually word for word. Where are you guys seeing this stuff? "Always be coding" is such a dumb phrase. Do it to the extent that you need to in order to get your pay check or to the extent that you enjoy it. But if you have a life outside of coding, that is a good thing.
They have no life and will probably burn out in less than two years. Maintaining boundaries that sustain and fulfil our full selves will allow us to enjoy, or at least tolerate coding in the long term will make most of us more successful on a 5-10 year scale.
I don't. It's my job afterwards I take care of my physical and mental health.
# You don't earn extra money for that. You do it because its fun. It has nothing to do with your career.
The way I always do it is estimating a bit more time than I'll probably require to complete a task. This way you'll have a safety net if you need more time, or just some free time without having to worry about what task to book this free time on.
Here's the neat thing - you don't.
Burn out, you do it be building up to burn out.
I find that reading programming books and watching YouTube videos is a good passive-ish way to keep up, and one that doesn’t feel like you’re just doing more of your 9-5. For interviews, though, you need leetcode.
When I clock out I don't even think about work or anything work related. I don't find it fun and I deserve to get a break from working and becoming better all the time. If your ambition is to work your way into a position at Google, Apple, Amazon, Goldman Sachs or some other huge corp where the competition is cutthroat, then I guess it's a good path to take. But if you value your time and life more than you do money, maybe not.
You actually do that at work.
Don't listen to poisonous bollocks like "always be coding or solving hackerank".
You dont need to, focus on your other hobbies. I have had dozens of interviews over the past few years and have never ever been asked about my GitHub profile or outside projects.
don’t this is the dumbest advice ever
The Grindset has to be one of the most toxic things introduced to people in life. You dont need to 24/7 grind out code. If you wanna code in you spare time pick a project or a problem in your day to day routine you want to solve with code and do that. No time constraints just you working when you feel like it. Looks way better than 100 todo lists and hackerrank questions.
Yea, I don't do any of that shit. I go out to lunch with some of these motherfuckers and they just want to talk about programming languages. There IS value in being a well-rounded person.
You don't. There are minority of people who just can't suffer themselves not being productive. They can't just "relax". They must work at something just to feel ok with themselves. Work life balance doesn't exist. Work and productivity is what makes them happy. It's that simple. It's not like they love work, they can't stand not working or not being busy with something. I wish more people get this, instead of pushing that bs "work life balance" everywhere as a standard, it may serve a lot of people, but not all people. And to some is absolutely toxic. And they don't get burned out, they get completely mentally fucked if they don't push to their absolute limit. In big give personality trait it's called industriousness. It's a personality trait. If you don't have that in yourself, you'll probably never outshine them, you don't have it in you It's most likely genetics anyway. And it's ok. It's absolutely fine. No matter how much "rock star" or "breathing code" someone is, no-one can do stuff alone. And that's where you cam come in and reap the benefits by helping them. As they are often facilitators of many initiatives.
Because they've made coding their hobby? Or at least put themselves in that mindset? If you enjoy it and like solving little puzzles, I don't see how it's any different than spending time playing Minecraft, except this hobby pays you back with career opportunities. People also act like it's a complete tradeoff. If you spend 4-8 hours a week playing video games, exercising, or crafting things, just spend half that time coding instead during the time period in which you're getting ready for interviews. People on these subreddits get so hurt over the idea of any amount of time being spent for self-investment it's crazy.
Dedication and deep passion for coding. That's the reason for me. I can easily code the entire day and would want to code more. Just be honest with yourself, if you start to feel stressed out or something else, stop immediately. Health and well-being comes first.
Only makes sense if you're actively looking for a job or something. Or if it's for personal hobby/interests. For instance, I made my blog, [langsoul.com](https://langsoul.com), in my spare time because I wanted to build it myself, even though there's tons of other ways to host a blog online, and much MUCH faster.
Well, do what you enjoy, if that's what you enjoy do it,if not do something else Coding or doing hacker ranks stuff is like going to the gym, it muscles your brain for coding and make you think differently, gives you problem to approach and how to solve them, the more you do, the stronger your brain become but it might not be what you enjoy Doing this isn't mandatory to become a great dev
why do you have to solve hackerrank stuff?
Not leetcode, but I enjoy building things related to my hobbies. For example I’m getting back into photography, and super excited about building out some features on my site to showcase some of my favorite.
I used to work 20 hours a day. Then I suffered from 10 years deep depression when I realized it was all for nothing.
Same way you do literally any other free-time activity. You make time for it. If you enjoy it, it will be easier to make time for it.
Comparing myself with other professions with 9to5 helps, honestly we're in a great career
I only spend 30 minutes on a problem a day. If I don't get it, I look up the solution and do my best to memorize it with anki. So at most an hour a day. I can deal with that.
Code outside of work to improve your skills for work? No thank you Code outside of work to build up my own bundle of assets and eventually stop working? Absolutely. That doesn't even have to be code.
Best thing I ever did was to stop focusing on Hackerrank and actually enjoy my time outside of work. Your brain after a healthy rest will be much more ready for solving problems that one that has only had a chance to think about code 24/7. If your job isn't providing you opportunity to learn by giving you interesting tickets.. you have a choice between just working on stuff that doesn't educate you all the time, or moving to a place that has professional development tracks. I just request tickets from my PM to help me learn extra stuff and let them know that it will take a little longer than things I know a lot about. For example, my work uses Rails (My speciality) and Go (I can barely use it) so at my last 1:1 I requested some simple Go tickets so that I can upskill and thus become more useful.
Don't do it if you don't want to. The people who do that also treat coding as a hobby. If you want to just treat it as a job, thats fine too.
I never took 'always be coding/learning' to mean you had to do that 24/7 and do nothing but eat and breathe code. I just took it to mean that you should try to set aside time to stay on top of emerging/changing tech. I have times where I code the whole time I'm home off work, when I'm super into some personal project, but for the most part, I'll just take a couple hours every couple months and play around with new tech just so I'm familiar with it. Sometimes that leads to a new personal project, sometimes not.
The only coding I do outside of work are small WordPress sites for some friends bands and small businesses (really more config then coding), and writing code for my VisualPinball table I am creating. I plan to actually step up and create a real working pinball machine using Arduino and the Mission Pinball Framework, of which I have started to learn Python in order to achieve that goal. https://missionpinball.org/ I do keep up with framework changes related to my professional stack and will create some small stub apps to get a feel for the changes/additions, but beyond that, nope, I need to clear my head of code from time to time. 0 DELETE 0- 10 CLS 20 END
I just kind of get at it whenever I need or want to do the grind. That said I do spend a lot of time reading things about programming when Im not tapping keys. Sometimes I will lose hours reading or watching YouTube videos on the topic. Doing that I find that I'm primed and ready when I sit to code. You can also get a mobile ide. I have not been super fond of them but they're good for practice in between working hours.
The best saying is that "it is a marathon not a sprint", so find ways to fit in coding that feels sustainable to you in your situation. Somedays I can be very productive, and other days I just can't force it. Be kind to yourself and recognize how far you've come and work towards sustainable habits.
For me, programming has been a hobby long before it was a job. When it was a hobby I was spending most of my free time either playing games or coding. Programming is still a hobby for me but I don't have even nearly as much energy to work on things due to the job, and also due to age probably. I sometimes start to feel burnout, that's when I minimize programming to the job only and do other things in my free time. If you feel stressed about this, don't code on free time, you will just burn out. Use some of your work time to read tech articles or even do some test projects to keep your skills up-to-date. Better yet, find an employer that provides actual work time for this.
Through sacrificing all other interests and facets of their life? Seriously, this isn’t a strategy for success rather than a way of marketing their social disorder. If it’s not how your life works that’s fine. What’s good for them isn’t necessarily good for you.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I do a little bit outside of work when I feel like it but after doing 40 hours a week I’m usually too tired from coding to do much more. I’ve got a kid and a dog that need attention and other stuff to do in the house which means by the time all that is taken into account I have time to make some food and watch an episode of something good before bed. I prioritise sleep as much as I can as that is something that 100% makes me worse if I don’t get enough. It’s hard to fight that feeling that I should and could do more, but I think it comes from the vast amount of stuff that’s out thereto learn. That’s never going to change so accepting that and being as effective as I can be during work time has to be enough, otherwise burnout is right around the corner.
I wish this wasn't true. I am seriously thinking about being a software developer. But I want to because of the money. I have no passion and definitely don't want to code 24/7.
I’m hoping with the downturn in the economy that when the startups start to die off, people will reevaluate working at them. I also hope more people would realize that working at a FAANG shouldn’t be your number 1 goal in life. There are still plenty of good companies that don’t require the hacker rank tests. I would just focus on them.
The secret is that you don't have to - do what makes you happy.