I have been building stuff for about 8-9 months and I love it. Developing web pages, converting design to code and a hell lot of learning all the way. Recently when I was asked what hobbies I had other than coding i had to think for quite sometime. Few people here think it is weird to have it as a hobby..few appreciate it..what is your take on this? Has this happened to you anytime?
This is not normal - this is great! I'll think about it myself - your work is your hobby! Many people in the world are thinking about it! Before starting to coding, I worked on different jobs - a waiter, a sales manager, a writer e.t.c. I prefer to work with a computer - everything is clear and simple! So in general, I believe that if work is your hobby, it’s great!
No,I don't like what I'm doing now. I don't what to do if I don't coding.It's just a skill for living.
Simply yes! It started out as a hobby a year ago and it's still my favourite hobby. Although I have a ton of active hobbies like baking, sewing and tutoring each day, coding is something I look forward to at the end of the day.
This is exactly how I started out in the industry. I am a hardware engineering by training and held a special disdain for software programming. Unfortunately, after I graduated, I was unable to land any jobs in board/chip design. Out of desperation, I took the role of a software engineer. Life sucked for the first few months, but once I started to study programming in order to improve, I realized that it's harder than it looks and there's a massive ocean of information that developers are supposed to know. Plus, it's easier to create something useful in software than in hardware. I had become a creator; without leaving my bedroom! That's when I started to love coding.
I strongly believe that passion is built from wanting to get better at something. If you are programming in your spare time, I would look at that trait as someone who wants to learn more and get better. You'll grow & rise faster simply because you're doing it a lot more. So, keep it up!
Other way around for me. Started as a hobby without me knowing that I can make money with it. Now I make money with it, too.
I’m beginning to suspect that Marco Alka is my alter-ego as a lot of his answers either are very similar to mine, or resonate with me deeply.
With that out of the closet, i did it the other way around, too. I started programming as a little kid, about the age of 9 or 10. I looked at the source of all 4 apps bundled with QBasic, and learned a lot from them. I built a file manager in BASIC, some nifty text mode games, and the controlling interface of a space station (a fictional one, obviously). At 14 i switched to Pascal with similar projects. At 16 i started using many languages in parallel: C, Tcl, shell scripting, and Perl. A bit later came PHP, and meanwhile a lot of Linux server administration.
Soon i found myself in my first job as the sysadmin of a small ISP, then a PHP web developer, then a sysadmin of another company, then as a last level support of a huge aviation company, then as a programmer of a huge telco company. All this while retaining programming as a hobby. But…
I have other hobbies, too. I like working with wood. I have an old house to fix broken things in. I like making and fixing stuff, like toys of my kids. So i’m far from being constrained in programming. This helps a lot with the burnout factor which, like it or not, will reach you if you do the same thing for a long time.
Have fun coding (but have a backup plan)!
I've been in the same situation, many people have asked me what's your hobby, I replied: "coding". Most of the time I got a big laugh!!
The people who asked me like this and laughed, most of them are developers. But, not passionate developers, they somehow landed up in a programming job. Then treat coding as a 'work'.
Well I don't
Like Marco Alka, all started with a hobby.
Then I took specialized courses and now it's my day-job for more than 10 years.
BUT, it's not really my hobby anymore.
Though I enjoy programming at work, I don't open my text editor as much as I used to do once I am back home. I play video games or watch videos instead.
My problem is that I always want to start many things and never finish anything (sounds familiar?) and that made me loose motivation.
Also, family life and stuff, not enough time to do everything so I try to prioritize differently.
Other hobbies? Fountain pens, para-cord, photography, music, driving...
I've designed concept art for video games. I love video games. I run "easter egg" fan sites of some video games.
However...
They offer a fraction of the challenge of what programming does, and the achievements earned are things you can take with you in life, as a skill set.
That's my new video game, with no end boss.
Welcome to the world of software development, where programming takes over your life, one project at a time :D
For me, it seems like I did it the other way around, compared to you: I learned coding at school (which was quite rough in the beginning) and have been developing applications as a hobby since then. Funnily, I made my hobby my day-job, and still continue having it as a hobby. So it's programming at work and programming at home, though I have wildly different projects there. At work, I am a web developer. I create web applications and web pages. Sometimes, I also do server-side tasks or even mobile apps, not to forget all the tools we need for an easier dev-life and maintenance automation. However, at home, I focus on high-performance development with games and low-level stuff, like getting Rust to work on my Arduino, so I can have sensors and SkyNet and other things running. Variation is important! :)
Well, I guess it's like an addiction. It's so gratifying to write good code and solve difficult problems. The only issue is my offline-life constantly taking away programming-time ;)
Yeah it's very fun. I've delayed a lot of important things to finish coding useless stuff. Food, sleep, exercise, graduation, switching jobs...
I'm also considering just removing 'hobbies' from my CV because it really is mainly programming, but that sounds unlikely somehow.
It does seem uncommon among my programmer colleagues to have it as a hobby.
virabawuc
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