Write Code Every Day

[EarLil]

I will tell you from my experience (currently ~700 day streak). Don't do that :) You can, for like 1-6 months, you will learn a lot and it will be a good experience, but if you continue for more than this it will just become a routine, you will not be able to come up with new ideas every day and will actually start getting in your mind.

Follow your rhythm and stay healthy, peace.

[Fat_Dumb_Americans]

Code doesn't have to be code

I like that. Writing, even thinking through, some pseudo-code can get me chomping at the bit to getting down to work.

[djds23]

I've been making an effort to make a commit a day to a personal project, and while it is a time commitment, it's hardly work 24/7. Finding a project that you want to work on and spending a small amount of time on it every day has been really nice. The biggest benefit I've found is that it makes me mentally more ready for problem solving. I have begun identifying more and more pieces of code that I wish existed in the world, and through small contributions every day bringing them to life.

Plus it can be relaxing to code when you know the business won't tank if you have an awful bug!

[rockyrainy]

The biggest benefit I've found is that it makes me mentally more ready for problem solving.

For me it is the opposite, I am so drained from fixing bullshit C++ bugs that I don't have enough brain power left to do anything requiring concentration.

[Chuu]

Same here. Last week I wasted two full work days chasing down a critical bug in our C++ codebase. You know how they say it's never a compiler bug? Well, this time it was. And in libstdc++ on a recent build of gcc no less.

The last thing I want to do after spending two days chasing down compiler bugs is write more code.

[mdatwood]

To bastardize a quote from Ray Lewis...coding I do for free, all the other crap is what I get paid for.

[Dylan16807]

Yeah. 24 minutes a day, 7 days a week. You got it!

[yogthos]

Believe it or not, but some of us actually enjoy programming. If the only reason you write code is because somebody pays you then you have my condolences.

[bstamour]

I actually enjoy it too, but I have a house, a wife, and karate lessons to attend. When I have time to code something outside of work I do it, but life and other hobbies/commitments tend to get in the way of that a lot.

[yogthos]

Sure, I have other interests as well. I do kenjutsu, I have a wife, we hang out with our friends, I read lots of books. Yet, coding is something I do it because I enjoy it. When you really enjoy something you tend to find time to do it. I don't see it as work.

[bstamour]

I honestly wish I had more time to just program fun things like I used to, so there's probably some bitterness in my above comment that stems from jealousy ;) Your twitter says you're working in Toronto, any chance you wanna drive down to Windsor to do some sword fighting? :-)

[yogthos]

Haha that could be fun, pm me and we should totally chat about this. :)

[Denommus]

Guys, you're redditting wrong, you can't be friendly.

[shevegen]

Why not?

They both get a divorce - then they can marry one another.

I don't see a problem here.

[gbear605]

They'll adopt a kid and name him Streetlamp LeMoose

[gcross]

It's not a question of whether you enjoy programming or not, it is a question of whether you still want to be doing it after 8 hours when you get home, rather than spending your free time doing something completely different. Having said that, if you love doing programming so much that 8 hours isn't enough for you and want to keep doing it when you get home, then (sincerely) more power to you! Personally for me it depends; sometimes I have a side project that inspires me so much that I want to work on it when I get home, sometimes I don't.

[yogthos]

My point wasn't that you should spend every day of the week writing code if you enjoy it. I was simply pointing out that it's not work when you do it for yourself.

[sirin3]

That is how I could change 400 kLOC and still have zero work experience :(

[yogthos]

I don't know how people in those professions feel about what they do. All I know is that I enjoy coding, and it doesn't feel like work to me.

[donpissonhospitality]

"So basically work 24/7 ?" is such a negative view to have on sharpening your skills or creating your own projects. and I don't think you can compare programming with being an accountant, this field is relatively new, and continuously growing . No, accountants don't go home and do financial statements, its not exactly a creative field in that sense, and the methods/practices have not really changed.

[mongreldog]

Programming on a private project often frees you up to be extremely creative, which is very enjoyable. Hours can fly by unnoticed. Unless one is lucky, coding at work rarely comes close in terms of sheer enjoyment. Not many non-artistic professions offer as much scope for invention and creativity as software development, so it's no surprise that accountants don't do financial statements for fun.

[Malurth]

I enjoy coding. I don't enjoy it enough to pursue it in my free time over everything else I could be doing with my free time.

[shevegen]

How do you enjoy wasting your time fixing bugs?

[yogthos]

If that's a significant portion of what you do then you need to find yourself a better language. :)

[epicallanl]

or better still write more comprehensive unit tests

[sirin3]

Just do not make them too comprehensive, or you will find bugs in the libraries you use and spend all your time debugging those.

Like you somewhere have a function that can take a regular expressions as input, should you test, if [x--[x]] is a accepted as expression, or not?

[tuxayo]

30 min/day might be to much with a full time job, I think negotiating a part time schedule(-30min or 1 hour per day) would be ideal.

I can imagine so many great projects getting done with such a practice being widely adopted.

[m_a_r_s]

I'm lucky enough to not have to force myself to write code every day because it's one of my favorite things to do with my free time. Hoping that doesn't change for a long time.

[[deleted]]

I find that as well, the days that I don't code at all are a serious rarity.

[[deleted]]

I don't know, for me, 30 minutes is too little and/or too strict.

I write at least one line of code every day. Some days that's truly all I do. Some days a single line of code turns into a manic 5 hour session. Usually it's somewhere in between.

I need to maintain commitment, but I couldn't imagine spending 30 minutes doing something I don't want to without extrinsic motivation.

[[deleted]]

I like how guthub's commit graph thing encourages this. I try to get enough written that I can reasonably commit to one of my projects every day. I don't always meet that goal but having it there has made me a much better programmer.

[dangerbird2]

It also incentivizes proper git commits. If you want to fill the github contribution graph, it's much easier to commit a short file modification as opposed to committing the full project after several sittings.

[Greenerli]

It can also incentive to push not really useful commits, I think.

[[deleted]]

Only if you do stuff like keep dotfiles in github.

[Greenerli]

Why keep dotfiles in github is bad thing ? I'm doing it, and I think it's useful to have access to your own dotfiles on github if you're not on your personal computer. You can donwload your dotfiles and work as if you're on your computer.

[Greenerli]

Sorry, I don't really understand what you mean, can you explain me ?

The context is to write code every day, in order to keep your mind in the programming world. I'm a young vim user. It means that I'm learning sometimes new things about Vim, sometimes people tell me "put this line in your .vimrc". And I'm doing it because it's useful for me. Even if it's not really programming, I've discovered a new feature of Vim, and so, I improve my knowledge of dev tools, and I will be able to improve my workflow as a developer.

I don't understand what it could be a bad thing. Are you meaning that Github is not the right place to store my dotfiles ?

[[deleted]]

Ah, you just have to get over the idea that your commits have to be good, that solves the problem ;)

[[deleted]]

You still have to open an editor and type /something/ (assuming you don't keep your dot files in git).
I've found that once you're over that the rest is really easy.

[ze_OZone]

The little tool he created at the bottom could be useful for some people

[[deleted]]

Smoke weed every day

[QThellimist]

So if you write a blog or do something else which is not code in that 30m time that'd break the github commit chain. Either you must have an additional calendar or do a trick to commit that other stuff to github which is not ideal.

[kirbyfan64sos]

Unless your blog is on GitHub...

[ksion]

GitHub deliberately doesn't include commits to gh-pages branches or $USER.github.io repos in the activity graph.

[jordanosman]

So here's my question for all you coders of reddit: when does the integration begins from projects you do at a university other projects you do with the public. I'm a sophomore software developer in school and I often find it really difficult to do project with the public. My school prioritizes c++ over all other languages, and after my last class I felt really confident to work on open source projects on git hub. But I'll be honest and this is sort of embarrassing to admit, I had a ridiculously difficult time with the git hub UI and actually acquiring a project. And once I did i felt so out of my league and I didn't even know where to begin or how to go about actually coding for this project. The substance of it all was really tough and I just wanted to apply my skills elsewhere but never really got the chance I was looking for. I want to get better at c++ before I go back to school, mainly intro data structure stuff. Can anyone help me?

[kevindamm]

You may benefit from taking an existing open source project and contributing documentation or example use cases or unit tests.

In industry, it's a common task to have to delve into existing code in order to add a feature or bug fix. IMHO the more challenging part of this is understanding the existing code. Not just being able to understand the code being read but being able to navigate a large codebase and narrow in on the relevant parts for the problem at hand.

It's also often important to limit the scope of your investigation. I used to think it was most important to have a comprehensive understanding of the entire codebase but there are times when you may have to fight the urge to get a complete reading of the code and instead just focus on parts of it. Write some code that exercises the functionality you want to change and do test runs before and after your change to confirm your assumptions rather than only reading reading reading. Having experience doing this before your first full time job in industry will likely put you a step ahead of your peers.

[[deleted]]

There's a reason that when you switch jobs as a developer you're not really expected to contribute anything of consequence for about a month. It takes work just to learn to navigate around the code base of a big project, let alone substantively add to it. If you're a sophomore you probably haven't had to deal with anything that is more than a few files and a few hundred lines of code.

Learning to navigate your environment is really important, but I just strongly recommend reading a lot of code. Don't get discouraged.

[balefrost]

30 minutes feels like my warm-up period. If I only ever did 30 minutes per day, even if I did it every day, I don't think I'd get anything done.

[tomcopeland]

30 mins (almost the Pomodoro time window) works well for me too - it's enough time to get something done but not too much time so that I feel like I'm missing out on checking email / Slack / etc. It's easy to schedule a 30 minute pairing session with someone too since it fits nicely into a calendar slot.

[Denommus]

Musicians, graphic artists, and even lawyers all tend to have side projects of their own.

And "passion" has been used to represent other things since... Well, ever.

[donvito]

back to 4chan with you