Every Computer Scientist Should Have a Creative Hobby | Hacker News Reader

Every Computer Scientist Should Have a Creative Hobby

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64 pointsyashtul35 comments

There is one big assumption made in articles like these that I think are worth exploring.

These quotes (and several others in this piece) all take as a given that it is important to constantly be striving to get better at your work:

"Creativity drives more creativity." "You are now a better thinker and coder." "More perspective means better products"

The author doesn't consider that many of us are content with our current abilities. I'm content with my ability at least.

In fact, I probably have spent too much time in my life focusing on improving my abilities, which I regret. I should have been spending more time with my family, especially my late father. I should also have been spending more time improving my physical health like making healthier food choices and spending more time being active outside.

There are limits to how productive one can be in a professional environment. In my experience, most of the time there are structural limitations to improving the quality or speed of your work.

Having a career is like a marathon; take it slowly and try to balance everything so you don't burn out.

Why not have a creative hobby just because it could make your life more fulfilling? You don't need to pick up a creative hobby just because it makes you a better scientist/engineer.

So who's this article for, exactly?

"All of a sudden you start realizing that writing code is more than just attempting to solve a problem; it is attempting to solve a problem for your user. The ability to recognize that you are building for users gives you more perspective and clarity."

Not to be that guy, but for anyone who codes for a living this is.. kinda obvious. In fact it's often formally codified into business practices, particularly in any form of Agile software development.

At this point I thought he was talking to researchers, which might make some sense (God knows some of my professors' code wouldn't pass a basic code review), but then he goes on to talk about teams and designers and animosity between developers and designers... huh?

If there's animosity between a company's developers and designers then one or more people are putting their egos ahead of their jobs. Granted there are bad apples in every barrel, but it's a behavioral problem, not a technical one. Certainly not one that's going to be solved by taking up a hobby.

So I guess this column is aimed at imparting basic insight known by many Computer Science undergrads to mediocre software developers working at mediocre companies. Fair enough, but I doubt those types of people read HN.

I recently picked up knot-tying. I wouldn't necessarily call it a creative hobby but it's a nice challenge and pretty satisfying/useful. Costs about nothing, can do it at your desk.

+1. Fellow knot tier here. I mostly practice it (at my desk) to keep a working memory of knots that are useful for camping.

I loved knots as a boyscout, how do I get into that as a hobby? Do you invent new knots? Try to do very complicated knots?

I'm still relatively new at it so I'm having fun with learning various knots and practicing on a few different lengths of rope I have at my desk. Inventing a new knot would be great, but I'm not at that level yet.

It's more of a casual hobby, but knowing knots can vastly enhance other activities. The spatial challenge of learning the knots is what's most appealing to me right now.

I've got two books at the moment, the 'Ashley Book of Knots' which is a classic, and the "Everything Knots Book".

I loved knots as a Boy Scout too. It never occurred to me to practice this as an adult. What a great idea.

Blogging seems to be a popular creative hobby not only because it has a low barrier of entry but it also helps you communicate better. On the other hand when I play the piano, do abstract art and write poetry these are important too.

To be honest a Creative hobby not only solves the problem of making you more creative but it allows for an escape and release of thinking of other things. Even if you aren't optimizing yourself creatively it helps.

Writing comments on HN would be even lower to a barrier of entry and still qualify as creative. I'm sorry I couldn't hold back to go a little meta in this comment ;-)

I'm not sure I'd classify typical blogging (and HN commenting even less) as "creative hobby". Creative writing is different enough to be considered its own category and I don't think typical blogging falls under it.

"creative writing" is a specific genre of writing that focuses on originality. But for most, "creative" just refers to the act of creating something. A blog entry creates something, as does an hn comment.

Software development IS a creative process, especially when focusing on code craftsmanship.

Engineering can be creative but most of the time it is not. We are mostly applying existing solutions to well known problems.

And the ideal application of those existing solutions often requires creativity to mate them to the problem domain.

Is an artist not creative if they use pre-mixed paint?

A more apt analogy would be asking if an artist isn't creative because they put a jigsaw puzzle together.

put the jigsaw together by haphazardly cutting off all the tabs that wouldn't lie flat and filling in all the empty spaces with glue

A jigsaw puzzle goes together only one way. Many engineering problems can be solved in infinitely diverse and creative and unique ways.

That is called learning and is indeed a creative process.

Just so you're aware, calling yourself a computer scientist because you have a degree in CS is something that only college students / recent graduates do. "Software Developer" is a better word for what you do.

This is a bit of an overgeneralization. Are all computer science graduates software developers? Are professors with PhD degrees in CS not considered Computer Scientist? Your statement assumes graduates stop at the BS level and get programming jobs.

Yes the borders between are categories are blurry but it helps to start with a crude generalization. The only people I know who call themselves computer scientists publish papers, and most people don't start calling themselves computer scientists until they join the scientific community in some way.

Don't you mean "engineer"? ;)

Or something like that :)

I whole heartedly agree with this along and this seems to be confirmed by PG's essay on painting[0].

For me music seems to be a natural hobby and creative outlet. I see a lot of overlap between coding and writing/making music. At its core, both use code and abstractions into something that humans can enjoy.

And now I find my software engineering skills being directly applicable to making electronic music as well. Making music gives me a fresh outlook on working in tech and making products.

Anyways, that was a personal rant.

0:http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

Most people here probably know Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters essay but just in case:

http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

Graphic illustration is a great skill for any software developer to have. I began developing a basic illustration skillset only a few years ago and have used it many times in my work. I can completely lose myself in the creative process. There aren't many other practices where I can focus so intensely for so long. I'm OK with having a beginner's skillset, considering I had none not too long ago.

I did all of the illustrations for my open source project page, which I've re-used for presentations and conference poster session with great success: https://yosaiproject.github.io/yosai

poster session: https://imgur.com/a/BdFho

How did you get started?

I learn best with a goal in mind. So, my entry into learning Adobe Illustrator was by tracing the outline of this Japanese castle. It required one tool in the entire application and by the end of the project I was pretty good with it! I continued learning one major tool at a time. Youtube videos and blog posts were helpful.

original: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Matsumot...

mine: https://github.com/YosaiProject/yosai/blob/master/doc/docs/i...

"Every X should Y" is an excellent way to say your argument has zero nuance to it.

"Every X should Y" is a succinct way to say "Doing Y helps strengthen or create skills that are useful in doing X, X and Y are related on a fundamental level, and those who do X are rather likely to enjoy doing Y because of that relationship."

Naturally, the article goes into the nuances of the subject.

Every schizophrenic should take their medication. Every small child should ride in a carseat. Every forest camper should be careful not to spark forest fires.

Every argument should have nuance.

Nuance is the enemy of persuasion.

The article disproves its own point about Atom. It tries to show how things aren't successful if they aren't easy to use, but rightly says that Atom is extremely popular, despite not opening large files.

I like to believe most did, like myself, but then it became a job and we struggle to find something creative to fill the hole through a series of futile attempts in hopes of discovering something that sticks

Actually, computer science IS my hobby. I am a hardware engineer by trade.

My hobby is learning languages, Chinese, Arabic, etc, etc

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