Coffee shop programmer | Hacker News Reader

Coffee shop programmer

12monkeys.co.uk

36 pointshassy32 comments

A word of warning from a Seattle guy who does this all the time: if you start going to coffeehouses to work, please take the environment of the place into account.

Nothing is more grating than when a previously social, comfortable place is turned into a caffeinated study hall by geeks with laptops. Likewise, it's awful when a quiet, subdued place is over-run with noisy group meetings. Usually, the owner of an establishment makes it pretty clear what kind of environment they're trying to achieve with their business, and it's your job (as a guest), to respect the owner's wishes.

Some coffeehouses make an effort to accommodate laptop people; others don't. So if you go somewhere and you find that they don't have enough outlets, or no wireless signal, or whatever other annoyance, just take it as a given that they don't want you working there for very long. Whatever you do, don't try to bring your own outlet strips, chair cushions, ergonomic keyboards/mice/laptop stands, etc. to work around the ergonomics -- don't be that guy. If you can't work at a cafe for very long, just take it as a sign that you weren't meant to spend all day in the same location....

Interesting; I was just in Seattle a few weeks ago, and noticed the different kinds of coffee shops. Some were clearly designed for buying a coffee and working (Online Coffee), whereas others were designed for drinking coffee. In the part of Chicago where I live, everything is a chain coffee shop, so none of them are really conducive for getting work done. They all cater to the "I need my coffee before my 8am meeting" crowd. It's kind of sad, really.

Yeah, if Seattle has anything, it has an overabundance of independent coffee houses. Most towns have one or two independent places, and they're treasured gems. In Seattle, there's something like two per block.

(That's what happens when the weather is so depressing that you need a caffeine hit to justify getting out of bed in the morning. :-P)

Fully agreed, from another full-time Seattle cafe denizen.

The first startup where I worked, it was just me and the founder, and we were always working from a Starbucks with two laptops as a way to save money on the office and also to allow for change of scenery (this was Manhattan, and there were something like 60 Starbucks here at the time) It worked great for 3 months. After Thanksgiving all the stores started to play the same Christmas Tunes CD on repeat - nothing kills concentration quite as badly as hearing "Jingle Bells" for the sixth time in a day. (headphones only mildly alleviated the problem)

$100 spent on Shure earbuds can solve the Christmas music problem. They are essentially earplugs. I can't hear a thing but my iPod when I'm using mine.

I have these ones myself... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007WZLDC/

the most disturbing thing on starbuck's playlist last year was the Carol King live album. I wanted to kill myself when they started playing it every hour.

The alternatives, if you still have Tmobile wireless, are

- Fedex Kinko's, harsh lighting coupled with excessive air conditioning, and who knows what kind of fumes you're inhaling?

- Borders bookstores are more like it, if you need ot look up K&R, gang of 4, whatever, there it is. BUt the wireless routers have limited range.

> - Borders bookstores are more like it, if you need ot look up K&R, gang of 4, whatever, there it is. BUt the wireless routers have limited range.

That's when you chip in with your friends/coworkers, get one wireless account (assuming you all go to the same store on a reasonably fixed schedule), and bring in some dd-wrt/openwrt/tomato routers (with all but one of them in bridge-mode), and have the master router set up with WPA2 on your side and either OpenVPN at the router level, or just use whatever external SSH boxes you've got as SOCKS proxies. (If you care, remember that Firefox doesn't proxy DNS requests over SOCKS unless you set the about:config item network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true).

Also don't forget to bring power strips, since you're bringing in more hardware.

I'm assuming it wasn't even classic Jingle Bells. How long did you listen to Jingle Bell Rock before you threw your Coffee at the barista and jumped out the window?

Put this on instead: http://www.brentlewis.com/cd9.htm .

Why not just buy a damn coffee pot and stay at home, providing you have enough space for an office. You can play whatever music you want, without ear-damaging headphones, and you don't have an endless stream of distractions, providing you don't have children.

When I'm coding on my laptop I'm probably at 50% efficiency compared to my desktop. I've got a giant Kinesis keyboard (great tool, but expensive), a big mouse pad, a 24" monitor, a subwoofer, a second pc, a stack of books, etc. One cannot replicate such an environment in a coffe shop.

A coffee shop is probably great for relaxing, brainstorming, having an occasional change of scenery, and writing children's novels, but I can't imagine it's an efficient way to produce complex software. Most importantly, I would never be able to concentrate, feeling like I am imposing by sitting in the shop for hours. Obviously, others enjoy sitting in coffee shops, but how many of you are doing complex work while there? Or do you save the light work for coffee shop visits?

I worked from coffee shops as well for about a year right after I started my startup. It's definitely better than working from home; you get to be around people and you end up being friends with other regulars. I rarely had issues with wifi, though. Which is one of the advantages of being in Silicon Valley.

Depending on how many hours you spend there the ergonomics might be an issue. Coffee shop tables and chairs are not deigned for extended periods of work. If you're doing it for a few hours a day, then it's okay. I used to work 10am to 10pm, so it gets tiring after a while. Now I'm renting a desk space in co-working office in a great location in Mountain View and I can't be happier. It's not expensive at all and you get to be around other startup entrepreneurs and learn from each other. It's another great option to try if coffee shops are not for you.

The only thing I find is that I need to manage the volume of Caffeine flowing throuh my veins - the initial rush can last 30 minutes, during which time I start getting seriously distracted until I calm back down again. Slow and steady rules the day where the coffee intake is concerned.

I do a lot of work in a cafe in Cambridge that has a pretty good geek crowd, but I think it's probably more the walk to the cafe than being in the cafe itself that does it for me.

couldn't agree more. people typically don't realize how important transitions are to getting you into the right frame of mind for the different parts of your day.

Haven't ever really tried working at a coffee shop. Because of this post I'm going to go try it right now, but I'm damned skeptical!

Update: this place has free wifi, I'm procrastination enabled again. I can only hope it's painfully slow!

Okay. It definitely seems to work. I think because it's less comfortable here than at home I feel the need to work instead of relax. Definitely going to do this some more.

I like to powernap between problems (and mull them over while I rest my eyes).

Coffeshops are not good for this, but I have found libraries often are. Quiet environments, often excellent views (most libraries seem to be in the best parts of town) and some even have areas you can lie down (meant more for people to read than nap, but many people do it) or big grassy areas surrounding them.

I spend part of nearly every day at a local coffeeshop. Change of locale away from my office helps my creative energy enormously.

I rarely get distracted by all the noise and movement, though. Once I'm in the zone, I don't hear the music playing or the people coming in-and-out of the joint.

Although I'd love to agree, I think there are two major reasons why I cannot program in a coffee shop.

1. No ergonomic keyboard (or my 22 in. monitor) to help prevent carpel tunnel.

2. No Aeron Chair.

Geez. I wonder how people used to work on 17inch screen (even few years ago, that used to be a luxury), and with normal/non aeron chairs.

Sarcasm aside, I thought I would have the same problem, but I quickly got used to working with my laptop, and I actually I am pretty fast in it, even if it is a 15.4'' screen. The only thing that I can't stand is not having a real mouse, so I bought one small laptop mouse, and that increased my speed and productivity alot. (I am a mouse person).

1. No ergonomic keyboard (or my 22 in. monitor) to help prevent carpel tunnel.

I sort of have this problem. I use a model M keyboard at home, and my laptop keyboard just doesn't compare. So I find it hard to type.

But it really doesn't matter, since there isn't all that much typing involved when programming; only when writing replies to Hacker News comments ;)

i just spent half the day in a coffee shop. the table was too low, so i over-stressed my back leaning in to see the screen properly. (i'm a bit near-sighted.)

Perhaps you should invest in a pair of glasses.

I should try that, but finding good coffee shop in my area is hard.

Business opportunity?

From "My Coffee House Nightmare" (http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/)

"The failure of a small cafe is not a question of competence. It is a sad given. The logistics of a food establishment that seats between 20 and 25 people (which roughly corresponds to the definition of "cozy") are such that the place will stay afloat—barely—as long as its owners spend all of their time on the job."

The problem with coffee shops in my area is not that they are bad, but the people that go there are annoying. Usually people between 12 and 20 who spend more time in front of mirrors than its healthy, and talk mainly about that. You cant help it if your town's retarder. I sometimes enjoy going to coffee shops with friends, but can't imagine working there, im not a regular anywhere, so maybe i just haven't found the wright place, so if i find a good comfortable place, i might consider working there.

Possibly but you should really try to concentrate on business opportunities that are a close match to your skill-set and temperament which I guess the coffee industry isn't for most of the visitors here.

Sure. But maybe there's a way to a) see what local people want or need, and b) bring that to the attention of people with the proper skills to capitalize on it. And maybe make a buck as the middleman. :)

Thanks for teaching me how not to be a social outcast. Great post.

(Irony sensor would be off the chart about now.)

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