This post really resonated with me. Through the daily drudgery, I lost that spark that drove me to programming in the first place as a kid and became disgruntled with it for a while. It wasn't until I pushed myself to get back to hobby (or shed) programming that I rekindled my old passion and, as a result, find my day job much more bearable.
I have an actual shed that I spend time in, doing maintenance work, building physical items (latest one is an auto-refilling bird watering station), and making beer. Given my day job is so desk-bound, and so tech oriented, I find using my hands in my off-time to be very fulfilling and what keeps me sane.
I had to get out of tech for that reason: i need a physical good I can create and hold. Using my engineer skills to build physical things satiates my brain so much more. I don't think I can ever go back to coding as a job. I just don't care about other people's garbage code, lol.
i got out of tech/coding so i could apply my skills to more real world stuff. it's been so much better. i don't make as much but i end each day with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. i wouldn't trade it away. my social life has gotten so much better, as well, because i'm happier in general and i talk to so many more people as a result. i smile more, i think is the main thing.
Same here. I've been trying to get more into the physical world, with a tech angle, rather than just pure software. As you said, using my hands is what keeps me sane, makes the world seem a little more real, if that makes sense?
Is there a place where people can document and share the things they are tinkering with in the shed?
I had this idea where people's inventions/devices could be sent around in a "pay-it-forward circle" for learning and inspiration. People already do that with crystals.
Also, can being aware that x number of people are working on the same thing yield to development in the state-of-the-art if they start working together?
I suppose there's always that tension between DIY'ers bouncing ideas off each other vs prototypes built in fitted-out research labs to think about.
Is this idea anything more that just the addition of another sub-reddit or using existing teamwork software?
If you had something to share, how would you choose it amongst the 10's or 100's of things you have already built? Maybe you'd need commercialization help? Are there liabilities and risks in sharing DIY devices?
I've been thinking about https://openhardware.directory/ and https://ohwr.org/ - maybe if you list your projects, agents can do the work of bringing people together and finding new ways to develop them. It's about value-adding on top of decentralized and disjointed projects. An easy way to construct plans or follow them? How to minimize duplicated work across the world?
Maybe a "Universal Commerce Protocol" (http://ucp.dev) but for scientists?
Hackaday.com comes to mind. That's a blog with those tinkering things. Hackaday.io is a big base where people store their schematics and worklog, present their inventions and tinkering as they happen.
I did this for ~10 years, and absolutely no regrets, it was a lot of fun and the side projects gave me energy.
Nowadays it's hard though, learning a new language, with a gf and a full-time demanding job, I don't have a lot of time to be tinkering. I do feel a bit sad about this but just assumed it's just life, and cannot imagine with kids how impossible this'd be.
I did look at doing some basic housekeeping with LLMs (updating deps, standardize testing across projects, etc) and realized I have literally 200+ side projects, most of them websites/JS libraries/React libraries. I was a bit baffled, of course 80% of it is trash, but I was kind of amazed at how many things I've actually done.
There’s this special feeling when you can sit down later in the evening to tinker for a couple of hours, or read a challenging/inspiring book in peace.
But when I don’t have time and frankly energy, then I still try to do _some_ minutes of this kind of thing daily.
I feel like there‘s a big difference between 0min and 15min for anything (also includes exercise, meditation etc.), and while it’s great to have more time, there are diminishing returns beyond 30/45min.
When I push myself to do these things, it loses all meaning. I do fun programming because it's fun, when I tried pushing myself like this virtually always I ended up more tired (for a miryad of reasons). And if I need to push myself, I'd rather just learn more Japanese, or do some exercise, or something else. But when I have like 1-2 weeks holiday, I will for sure sneak a few full coding days in there, and that is liberating.
I agree with this. But there‘s a big difference between building a habit of doing some intellectual or creative activity regularly and pushing yourself to do a specific thing.
Before having built a more regular habit I was often in a sort of excitement-burnout loop. That doesn’t work well for me.
Everytime I go back and look at some of my older projects, I am in awe of how much I had done in the short while when I was working on it. Side Projects are kind of the only real way I think one can learn software engineering. Great read
The big problem starts when your job contract limits what you can do with your intellectual property. Then you can have. your shed, but you can't show it to anyone, you can't invite friends, you can't use to plan your future business etc.
Did them, the games, the websites, the failed startup thing.
I just do other things now.
Building finance stuff during the day, doing little computer outside work (a bit of 3D printing here and there).
It’s fine. My career’s fine. The work doesn’t suffer from it.
Do I have the spark? Idk, I feel I am too old for that spark shit. There is work to do, I do it. If it’s tedious, I’ll drag me feet a while, but eventually it’ll be done. It’s just work.
This post really resonated with me. Through the daily drudgery, I lost that spark that drove me to programming in the first place as a kid and became disgruntled with it for a while. It wasn't until I pushed myself to get back to hobby (or shed) programming that I rekindled my old passion and, as a result, find my day job much more bearable.
Opposite for me.
I have an actual shed that I spend time in, doing maintenance work, building physical items (latest one is an auto-refilling bird watering station), and making beer. Given my day job is so desk-bound, and so tech oriented, I find using my hands in my off-time to be very fulfilling and what keeps me sane.
Different strokes, as they say.
I had to get out of tech for that reason: i need a physical good I can create and hold. Using my engineer skills to build physical things satiates my brain so much more. I don't think I can ever go back to coding as a job. I just don't care about other people's garbage code, lol.
i got out of tech/coding so i could apply my skills to more real world stuff. it's been so much better. i don't make as much but i end each day with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. i wouldn't trade it away. my social life has gotten so much better, as well, because i'm happier in general and i talk to so many more people as a result. i smile more, i think is the main thing.
And what are you doing now? :-)
Same here. I've been trying to get more into the physical world, with a tech angle, rather than just pure software. As you said, using my hands is what keeps me sane, makes the world seem a little more real, if that makes sense?
https://speakoala.com/
Is there a place where people can document and share the things they are tinkering with in the shed?
I had this idea where people's inventions/devices could be sent around in a "pay-it-forward circle" for learning and inspiration. People already do that with crystals.
Also, can being aware that x number of people are working on the same thing yield to development in the state-of-the-art if they start working together?
I suppose there's always that tension between DIY'ers bouncing ideas off each other vs prototypes built in fitted-out research labs to think about.
Is this idea anything more that just the addition of another sub-reddit or using existing teamwork software?
If you had something to share, how would you choose it amongst the 10's or 100's of things you have already built? Maybe you'd need commercialization help? Are there liabilities and risks in sharing DIY devices?
I've been thinking about https://openhardware.directory/ and https://ohwr.org/ - maybe if you list your projects, agents can do the work of bringing people together and finding new ways to develop them. It's about value-adding on top of decentralized and disjointed projects. An easy way to construct plans or follow them? How to minimize duplicated work across the world?
Maybe a "Universal Commerce Protocol" (http://ucp.dev) but for scientists?
Hackaday.com comes to mind. That's a blog with those tinkering things. Hackaday.io is a big base where people store their schematics and worklog, present their inventions and tinkering as they happen.
Hackaday is amazing - so many cool, inspiring ideas. It’s been around a very long time too.
Hobby related forums are a great way for people working on similar projects to collaborate and share SoTA. Some random examples:
https://www.lathetrolls.com/
https://www.shroomery.org/
Ever heard of Github? Or forums?
I finally have a garage where i can weld my own bike frame!
No more coding after 5pm!
Congrats and have fun. Oh and order those Paragon parts ASAP if you need them as they are closing shop!
https://www.paragonmachineworks.com/
I did this for ~10 years, and absolutely no regrets, it was a lot of fun and the side projects gave me energy.
Nowadays it's hard though, learning a new language, with a gf and a full-time demanding job, I don't have a lot of time to be tinkering. I do feel a bit sad about this but just assumed it's just life, and cannot imagine with kids how impossible this'd be.
I did look at doing some basic housekeeping with LLMs (updating deps, standardize testing across projects, etc) and realized I have literally 200+ side projects, most of them websites/JS libraries/React libraries. I was a bit baffled, of course 80% of it is trash, but I was kind of amazed at how many things I've actually done.
There’s this special feeling when you can sit down later in the evening to tinker for a couple of hours, or read a challenging/inspiring book in peace.
But when I don’t have time and frankly energy, then I still try to do _some_ minutes of this kind of thing daily.
I feel like there‘s a big difference between 0min and 15min for anything (also includes exercise, meditation etc.), and while it’s great to have more time, there are diminishing returns beyond 30/45min.
When I push myself to do these things, it loses all meaning. I do fun programming because it's fun, when I tried pushing myself like this virtually always I ended up more tired (for a miryad of reasons). And if I need to push myself, I'd rather just learn more Japanese, or do some exercise, or something else. But when I have like 1-2 weeks holiday, I will for sure sneak a few full coding days in there, and that is liberating.
I agree with this. But there‘s a big difference between building a habit of doing some intellectual or creative activity regularly and pushing yourself to do a specific thing.
Before having built a more regular habit I was often in a sort of excitement-burnout loop. That doesn’t work well for me.
Everytime I go back and look at some of my older projects, I am in awe of how much I had done in the short while when I was working on it. Side Projects are kind of the only real way I think one can learn software engineering. Great read
The big problem starts when your job contract limits what you can do with your intellectual property. Then you can have. your shed, but you can't show it to anyone, you can't invite friends, you can't use to plan your future business etc.
Personally, I am over side projects.
Did them, the games, the websites, the failed startup thing.
I just do other things now.
Building finance stuff during the day, doing little computer outside work (a bit of 3D printing here and there).
It’s fine. My career’s fine. The work doesn’t suffer from it.
Do I have the spark? Idk, I feel I am too old for that spark shit. There is work to do, I do it. If it’s tedious, I’ll drag me feet a while, but eventually it’ll be done. It’s just work.
It is about finding balance between building in your shed and building skyscrapers.
The second half of this article is detected as AI by pangram: https://www.pangram.com/history/63fdecd4-f932-4fad-af60-da99...
The article felt honest and personal to me.
Ai detectors are bullshit.
That said, the second paragraph has the distinctive stocatto tone of AI
But AI is shaping how we write, so this could well all be hand written just by someone who spends time with AI output.
AI is also based on how we write. Some people are bound to write in a similar vein to LLMs naturally. See this person’s blog about it [0].
[0]: https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...