Ask HN: Are you programming on your holidays? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you programming on your holidays?

22 pointshoodoof49 comments

If yes, what are you building?

Selection bias, many enthusiastic "Yes" replies here, but consider those who are offline/vacation aren't here to reply "No".

For your productivity and health, it's important to unplug and enjoy holidays - http://qz.com/485226/this-is-what-365-days-without-a-vacatio...

For those that replied "Yes" wonder if the majority are from the United States, being it's the only "Rich Country" that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time - http://cepr.net/publications/reports/no-vacation-nation-2013

I agree that it's important to unplug every once in a while, but for some, programming is like reading. As an analogy consider a lawyer reading legal documents all day at work and going back home and reading a novel, it's exactly the same for me, working on my own projects is exciting and enjoyable.

Very much so. As a student, I have found that it is much easier to focus on my large personal projects in between terms, when I don't have homework and/or lectures every day to interrupt my coding sessions[1].

Edit: As for what I am building, I am working on a graphics editor written in Common Lisp, partially as a way to verify others' claims about Lisp's efficiency, and partially to see for myself how difficult it is.

[1]: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190891/programmer_inte...

Where do you go?

Portland State University[1], with a major in electrical engineering. PSU is, in general, not a very interesting college, with the exception of TheCAT[2]. TheCAT is, essentially, a small bastion for hackers of all types to gather together and work on various projects (incidentally providing IT support services for the MCECS college), and has been by far the most interesting part of PSU for me.

[1]: http://www.pdx.edu/ [2]: https://cat.pdx.edu/thecat.html

Yes, I usually get inspired on hobby projects during Christmas time. It's ok to sit home and ok to not do anything work-related, so it's perfect. I started a robot simulator this time. Usually I've done small games and one time I wrote a ray tracer.

Heck yes. I'm supposed to be on holiday at the beach with my fiance but she likes to sleep in so I'm getting some programming in!

Yep! Trying to write my very first programming language[1]. Aiming to have a legit GC (mark/sweep), a legit VM with bytecode (possibly stack-based to start out with), and familiar data types. Oh and I'm doing it entirely in C, because I have a special love/hate relationship with C that never seems to die. It's going slow, but very fun!

[1]: https://github.com/sdegutis/Paladin

Any resources that you're using to help you implement this? Looks cool!

Sorry for not responding earlier. Setting noprocrast seems to have this as its major drawback, that I can't reply in a timely manner.

I don't have many resources. Only these two:

- GC tutorial: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first-gar...

- intro to hash tables: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/pinewiki/C(2f)HashTables...

Oh wait I have one more resource:

- The Implementation of Lua 5.0: http://www.lua.org/doc/jucs05.pdf

It's not meant as a tutorial, but it's nice as a checklist and a reference.

I think this explains the popularity of compiler articles on HN these days.

Always programming. During holidays I like to get familiar with new technologies to see what they offer. Exploratory programming I guess you could call it.

Yep!

Opposite to everyone here - it's a big, fat no from me. I'm taking the 10 days to spend time with my family and finish some books. I'm always on the feeds and seeing what's happening, but it is, in my opinion, very important to down the tools and have a break. It's the same reason I don't code on vacation.

I wish.

My family is consuming my time and/or my hardware currently.

I have gotten to the point of buying a new laptop today. Just so I get my macbook back.

On the plus side my family seem happier. We're all well fed and I've socialised more this month than I have all year.

If I could get off HN, yes.

Yeah, taking the time to tidy up my personal site as well as learning some Go.

Had my last exam before Christmas so I've got a lot of catching up to do from a busy term without side projects.

Yes. I'm getting my personal site together and trying to get a head start on a game project (more or less a clone of the classic Berzerk[0]) since I kind of sort of want to do the game a month challenge but given how slow I tend to be, seriously doubt I'll make it.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk_%28video_game%29

I loved Berzerk - I remember playing the arcade version. Not much to it by todays standards but imagination filled in the rest.

All work and no programming makes me a dull boy

Yes, definately

Yes! I have been listening to a load of podcasts a few of which make me extremely worried someone is onto my idea so I'm coding like mad.

However, looking at it objectively, I think to pull off the execution of this project it will probably take 1-2 months of fulltime work. Anyone know where I can get, say, a hundred grand to help me start a business... If only.

:-)

What's your idea? Even a vague pointer to the field that it is in?

It's about making money from the Internet :-D

Yes I am! Nothing serious though, mostly explorations of some tech stacks and tools that I don't have the courage to try out in the evening after work. But in the end I may boot up something non-trivial to wrap all up, if a find an interesting idea.

I'm working on the successor to my gothic RPG: Manor of the Damned! ... Think legend of zelda (SNES) meets Castlevania. :D

http://www.TheHideoutGames.com

I have 10 clear days in which I can dedicate myself to programming.

Also seeing Star Wars and watching a few videos and a little computer gaming, but mostly programming.

I am not building anything in particular, but catching up on some online courses that I've been trying to complete all year.

Working my way through Software Foundations. Though that might not be considered programming.

Yes, no programming makes me dull

Definitely - only time I get to work on my personal projects in between the daily grind.

Yes, improving my household management software and toying with building a shell.

Working for a startup, so yes.

Not at all.

Yes, I'm learning python and flask.Trying to write a simple webapp

yes. also advent of code, because i didnt have enough time earlier.

Yes, last time I coded maybe half of a real estate android app.

Yes, personal projects (but also many other things as well.)

I'm working through stockfighter.io, lots of fun!

Yes, perfect time to catch up on open-source projects.

Yes, for fun and some serious stuff as well.

Yes. For fun. No serious projects though.

yeah!

iOS UI test automation using python, node and objective-c

everyday of my life!

building a realtime data management system for sites, apps, and themes. using angular, firebase, and codeigniter.

it was all good till you mentioned codeigniter

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