All of programmerdudes examples are different modes of consumption. In my experience the most fulfilling hobbies are those where you create something. It really doesn't matter what specifically - the creative part is the source of a sense of fulfillment. In my neck of the woods it now is a good time to try to make wine by oneself, for example. Just harvest some fruits, order yeast and off you go. Woodworking is pretty fulfilling, too, especially the manual, non-electrical side. Or wood carving. Carving takes about zero amounts of space and is pretty meditative. Gardening is great, and can also be started indoors with LED lighting, if space is a concern. Sewing is pretty fun, the beginner stuff are things like tote bags, i.e. you can use your own creations after a few hours. Some people like drawing or painting, or writing.

The plus for most of these is that you can actually use your creations by yourself and have a great source of gifts for friends and family.

Those are all pretty low-tec-examples, but of course you could also look into diy electronics, game programming etc. For some those aren't optimal because they resemble work too much.

I would personally avoid hobbies that tend to devolve into collecting kit, e.g. photography. IMO Great activites are those where the fun part is the creative task itself, and which involve manual exertion (assuming you are a desk worker).

Just learned how to ride a motorcycle (more or less) on my own over about a month or so.

I took a motorcycle course over one weekend. Took the license test another weekend. Bought a bike and filled out paperwork during the week (registration & insurance). Rode almost every day for the first month, practiced maneuvers (finding the friction zone, quick stopping w/o skidding) I wasn't comfortable with in a parking lot.

Now I'm comfortable riding almost everywhere. All told, it took one weekend of high effort (motorcycle class), medium effort for one week (1-2 hours daily of either: riding, reading a motorcycle riding book, filling out paperwork, researching/coordinating/buying the bike), and low effort for the rest of the month (15 - 60 minutes of riding -- FUN).

Only took a month of effort to acquire a lifelong skill

Any sort of crafting hobby, which ranges from making clothes to making swords to making furniture.

Graphical arts, digital and analog (which covers everything from painting with all different types of paints to mixed media, large format, small format, from the side of a building to the size of a grain of rice)

These are all mostly looks-based, but you can also make things that do things, make electronics, restore old electronics, go antiquing for vinyl players, go antiquing for anything else.

Join a choir, join a band, join a barbershop quartet, go to the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and listen to sea shanties.

The list goes on.

here are the hobbies I have had

archery, bowling, pool, mountain biking, ice hockey, inline hockey, floorball, ultimate frisbee, sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, rock climbing, shooting, reloading, hunting, home improvement (has a lot of sub areas), games programming, tae kwon do, kung fu, krav maga, jiu jitsu, paint ball, role playing games, online games, being helpful on forums, scuba diving, piano, golf, camping, chinese, poker, chess, settlers of cataan, cooking.

These are all activities that I have done for at least 6 months on a regular basis.

There are many things Ive only done a few times but will definitely do in the future (surfing, snowboarding, drone flying, 3d printing,etc)

At this moment I mainly mountain bike, kitesurf, krav maga, and bjj. In the winter I will snowboard and on my next beach vacation I will hopefully surf.

I make models. Metal Earth has some very nice aerospace ones [1]. Guillow's makes some amazing balsa wood models -- if you really want to, you can put RC engines in them and they'll really fly [2]. I currently play with Estes Rockets, but want to get into amateur rocketry like this guy who built a model Falcon Heavy with onboard navigational computer and engine gimballing [3]. Every Christmas, I add one more model building to my seasonal train set.

I'm also into photography, graphic design, videography, fishing, surfing, and backpacking. My wife's paints.

[1] https://www.metalearth.com/aviation [2] https://www.guillow.com/ [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504117

I recently took up baking (as in bread) as a hobby. It brings me joy to produce something as well smelling and testing as bread. Cooking in general could also be a hobby. Going hiking could be a hobby. Just enjoying life and being mindful of the things around you might open up your mind for hobbies you didn’t even think existed. :-)

Really anything that you're remotely curious about outside of what you do at work. Engage with something with genuine curiosity and you'll almost certainly find it leads you to a hobby you can try out for a few weeks. Get deeper into it or move on to the next.

Just to get started: instruments/music, foreign languages, cultural events, theatre/art/design, local volunteering, civic engagement/politics, outdoor activities, cycling/sports/yoga/gym, pets, travel, investing and finance, continued education (moocs/math/history/etc), meditation, ham radio, tabletop/video/retro gaming, books/writing/blogging, gardening, woodworking, cooking. Even "programming" things totally outside your field (little overlap with your day-job) can make for a good hobby if that's your thing.

Some are more fun than others to talk about to other people but that's not the point. I find whenever I'm feeling burnt out or stressed my problem is usually that I'm focused too much on work and not getting satisfaction from the rest of life. Hobbies can make up the rest of life.

You can have literally any hobby. Two of my lifelong hobbies, skateboarding and surfing, may seem somewhat atypical for the average software engineer, but you'd be surprised how many do at least two of the three.

My favorite example, William Stein (https://wstein.org/). Math/CS Professor at UW - absolutely kills it on a skateboard.

Personally, this year I started getting really into Scuba diving--a sport/hobby I hardly thought about for my entire life until I tried a single "Discover Scuba Diving" dive four months ago. Lately I've been diving deep into the hobby (hah) at home and in Thailand. I've been connecting with so many other people here in Seattle and discovered a whole community that's otherwise invisible. Most excitingly, turns out there's a whole new world down there under the waves! No need to search for alien life when it's already here on earth :D

Finding this hobby has given me pretty great happiness this year. I suffer from a fair bit of existential time anxiety, and anxiety over having too many consumptive "hobbies". Diving isn't exactly a constructive hobby, but it's opened up a new avenue of happiness that isn't strictly input/output for me.

Thanks for asking, it's fun to answer, plus the other answers are a treasure trove!

For me it currently is archery, underwater hockey, running, volunteering (as swimming instructor), keeping a (planted, tropical) fish tank, learning a new language (a local Filipino dialect), electronics (home automation).

In the (in some cases distant) past (yet could come make a come back): drums, guitar, drawing, writing, photography, origami, snowboarding, reading.

I work as a(n independent) software dev by day. So programming is my job, but it is also my all time (well, since 8) favourite hobby.

I started doing Muay Thai recently, and I quite like gardening

I recently bought a Onewheel, after never having done board sports in my life. Now I spend at least an hour on it a day, if not two. It's tons of fun.

If you look at my post from the new year you'll see I wanted to learn cha... but (happily) I became distracted by kizomba... try it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_XO7eOl9tQ&list=RDb_XO7eOl9...

For me: Running, Cycling (around different places), sailing, creating apps, creating games, creating AI models.

What? He listed 4 things in addition to software. Just do anything besides those 5 activities. This is a joke?

Wow I love how many people replied to you here. For me it's painting, acting, meditation, yoga, guitar, and lots of broad interest in media that aren't so conformed, like foreign, old stuff, etc.

Working on and racing cars is a) expensive, and b) actually not as expensive as you might think, and totally within the salary of a modestly paid software engineer with many other financial obligations.

Exercising, reading, volunteering, traveling, writing, hiking/boating/skiing and other outdoor activities, photography, studying a language, playing an instrument.

There's so many where do you even start? Arts, sports, cooking, reading can all be broken down into probabaly hundreds of things to do

well, my current hobbies are: flying (small aircraft), pen and paper role playing (think d&d + others), board games, photography.