So as the title of the thread implies, I'm curious how much people program outside of work related programming. I myself don't work in game dev, but I work as a software developer. I've found that I'm not super interested in doing more programming once I'm done with work for the day. I don't have any programming related side projects. I cannot do more programming after spending most of my day programming. I prefer to do other things, such as 40k, or 3d art, or even just read/watch TV. I know some people who, conversely, go home after work only to dive into a side project and program more.

So I'm curious about people here. How much do people program outside of work? Why/why not? Specifically though, I'm curious if this is just a personal preference or not.

As a note, this thread might be a bit skewed towards non indie devs, but feel free to share your experiences regardless.

Well, I work 9-6, once im done with getting home and cooking etc for the day its usually pretty late for me so I tend to spend my weekday evenings just relaxing a little.

Though on the weekends I do tend to work on coding projects / reading through coding books etc, mostly just because there are certain things I want to learn and work on.

So my time is sorta split between the.. small amounts I have during the week where I just wanna relax, and weekends where I actually have time to commit to working on projects properly without feeling burnt out ;p

I only program outside of work.  




* Technically not 100% true, but programming is not a skill required in my vocation.

Quite a bit, actually.

Depends on how much I enjoy the programming I am doing at work, and of course, how busy things are at home.  I've found that the less satisfied I am with my programming at work, the more time I find myself devoting to side projects.

42 minutes ago, ApochPiQ said:

Quite a bit, actually.

That is definitely a ton. My question for you then is do you ever feel burnt out by that much coding? Or that it's taking up too much time? How much time do you devote to these projects?

1 hour ago, LennyLen said:

I only program outside of work.  




* Technically not 100% true, but programming is not a skill required in my vocation.

I can understand that. When coding was not the major part of my day, I'd do quite a bit of it on the side.

3 hours ago, GibbonThatCodes said:

Well, I work 9-6, once im done with getting home and cooking etc for the day its usually pretty late for me so I tend to spend my weekday evenings just relaxing a little.

Though on the weekends I do tend to work on coding projects / reading through coding books etc, mostly just because there are certain things I want to learn and work on.

So my time is sorta split between the.. small amounts I have during the week where I just wanna relax, and weekends where I actually have time to commit to working on projects properly without feeling burnt out ;p

That's interesting. What sort of projects are these? Are they different from your work? 

The other question I'd like to pose to anyone who's doing a good amount of outside of work coding, why do you guys do it?

19 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

That is definitely a ton. My question for you then is do you ever feel burnt out by that much coding? Or that it's taking up too much time? How much time do you devote to these projects?

Sometimes I do a lot more programming than other times. There are plenty of weeks on that GitHub chart that show me inactive. So it comes and goes.

I try very hard to avoid genuine burnout and I'll readily take a break if it will help avoid problems in that department. I have other competition for my time as well so I have to be fairly good about scheduling other activities.

Overall I'd say I put in an average of 2 hours a day on side projects.

2 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

That's interesting. What sort of projects are these? Are they different from your work? 

In terms of things I work on, my job is like Sales ordering systems that integrate with major retailers .. so.. fun stuff? 

But outside of work, just for a bit of fun im working on a chat client in Python just as a way to learn that... but also going to be revisiting / redoing some old 3D projects from OpenGL into like Vulkan and DX11 / 12 so get a decent bit of experience working with them.

And once I get enough cash saved up (or can find someone to do them for free) I plan on getting some models made up etc and starting work on a fairly basic RTS game as like a major portfolio kinda piece... so the stuff I tend to work on out of work is very much different from my in work stuff ;p

9 hours ago, ferrous said:

Depends on how much I enjoy the programming I am doing at work, and of course, how busy things are at home.  I've found that the less satisfied I am with my programming at work, the more time I find myself devoting to side projects.

I know that feeling also actually. I worked a job where, although I was technically a software developer, I was doing very little coding. The result was that I'd program more at home.

8 hours ago, ApochPiQ said:

Sometimes I do a lot more programming than other times. There are plenty of weeks on that GitHub chart that show me inactive. So it comes and goes.

I try very hard to avoid genuine burnout and I'll readily take a break if it will help avoid problems in that department. I have other competition for my time as well so I have to be fairly good about scheduling other activities.

Overall I'd say I put in an average of 2 hours a day on side projects.

I guess that makes sense in some ways. For me it's less that I'd burn out and more that I just feel, well lethargic, for lack of a better word, when it comes to doing more coding. Are these just "for fun" projects?

6 hours ago, GibbonThatCodes said:

In terms of things I work on, my job is like Sales ordering systems that integrate with major retailers .. so.. fun stuff? 

But outside of work, just for a bit of fun im working on a chat client in Python just as a way to learn that... but also going to be revisiting / redoing some old 3D projects from OpenGL into like Vulkan and DX11 / 12 so get a decent bit of experience working with them.

And once I get enough cash saved up (or can find someone to do them for free) I plan on getting some models made up etc and starting work on a fairly basic RTS game as like a major portfolio kinda piece... so the stuff I tend to work on out of work is very much different from my in work stuff ;p

Well, learning a language I guess is a little different from a full fledged project. But, it seems, you're building a portfolio for game dev? Seems you have a specific goal.

I'm not sure if it's just that I don't like doing extra coding or if this is some larger trend for me. I noticed that even before I started my job (and after I graduated), I had like a couple of months before my job started, and I just didn't feel like coding. Most of what I worked (and still work on) is just 3d art. 

I just feel like I need something different to occupy my spare time. I'm not sure I hate programming, etc. I just seem to prefer variety? 

I swing back and forth between coding a lot on my own time, and barely ever. Partly depends how frustrated I am at work, how much free time I have, etc.

As for why... enterprise software engineering is pretty light on actually writing code most of the time, and even when you are, you spend more time writing tests and test frameworks than actually implementing functionality. So when you get home, you just want to skip the unit testing, and get pretty pictures up on screen. Which tends to negatively impact the quality of code you write on the side. YMMV.