This is a first for me. I’ve got some personal projects I want to work on, and I really enjoy programming. Normally first thing in the morning I’ll spend an hour waking up, drinking coffee, and writing some code.
I’m a professional software developer, and software development is a passion and hobby. But I felt like I needed a bit of a reset so I’ve made an effort to not write any code at all during the Christmas/New Years holidays (about 3 weeks).
Honestly I don’t feel like I’ve missed out, but I’m definitely looking forward to getting back into it and I think I’ll benefit from it. Ill be back at it again next week.
I know 3 weeks isn’t a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Have you found yourself taking a complete break from coding? How did you find things when you had to start up again? Felt like it benefitted you or ended up losing the trail a bit?
I only wrote code for !advent_of_code@programming.dev which is so different to my usual tasks that it feels like a break.
Not a bad idea really. Though if there is a problem I can’t solve within the hour, I tend to dwell on it and work through it in my head until I can get back to it. Thought just going cold turkey (so to speak) for the holidays might be better this time around.
I personally did 1 godot tutorial and that’s all I’ve learned this break
I’m so tired of coding for work, even though I always liked the thrill of just exploring where a project would take me. I’ve been neglecting my personal projects and, over time, stopped feeling bad about it. I have plenty of opportunities at work to learn about new things, it’s okay if I do something unrelated in my free time.
LLMs gave me some relief with work and I’m now able to at least think about programming other things for fun, but haven’t done any actual project yet.
Have children. You will have no spare time to code for several years after that 😆 Mine are 4 and 5 years old now and I never have time or energy to code outside work.
But I think that’s a good thing. I leave coding at work, mostly use my computer for gaming.
I might try walking away from the screen for the whole weekends as my new year resolution (for different reasons). My eyesight is starting to fail and I think a 2 day break from the screen every week could help.
I took up woodworking instead!
Same. I’ve been off a few weeks and I’ve been drinking cocktails and making mead. Been so nice not to see a screen. Well, one with code on it; I’ve watched a ton of shows.
I’ve found myself in similar situations. However I haven’t taken full three weeks off; I think my longest has been about 10 days.
I’ve always relished getting back to it with a clear mind and often a well thought out plan and it feels like the features flow faster from the fingertips.
Never fight taking a bit of time off, it grants perspective and lets you decompress, don’t think that can ever be a bad thing (given there’s nothing you really need to be doing in that time to make sure you’ve got a steady income)
If I feel like I am stuck while doing something either discussing it with someone else or doing entirely something else for a while (couple weeks) helps me get out of that local optima.
I have written code this holiday, but I was afk on vacation for a month in November. That was a good reset too. But tbh I like programming, the reset is more for the other circumstances of my work.
Probably would have, but a few scripts of mine broke after distro hopping, so I had to fix those.
Then I found out about Pomodoro timers, so I wanted to test them out. So, I fixed up some scripts with it.
I haven’t started any new projects yet, though.
